Project To Design Functional Foods Against Alzheimer's
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UAB researchers will participate in an ambitious R+D+I project to design functional foods for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular diseases. The Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce has allocated a budget of €21 million to the four-year project. Led by the company La Morella Nuts S.A., seven further companies, six departments from four universities (the UAB, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the University of Lleida and Rovira i Virgili University) and a technology centre (Institute of Food Research and Technology (IRTA/Monells)) are also involved. The project is oriented towards “establishing methodologies to design, assess and validate functional foods for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases and Alzheimer's” More than 50 doctors and technologists will participate. The objective of the project is to produce foods that reduce the risk of suffering cardiovascular diseases and Alzheimer's, as well as to improve the quality of life both of sufferers and of their families. This initiative, therefore, includes basic and applied research. It will generate new productive methodologies and will enable new products to be created that will increase food safety. Functional foods are those that contain biologically active components providing health benefits and reducing the risk of suffering illnesses. These include, for example, foods containing certain minerals, vitamins, fatty acids and fibre. They also include foods containing live microorganism cultures that are beneficial to one's health. Functional foods can be natural products or products that have been modified to add or remove a certain component. They may be for the whole population or for a specific group suffering an illness or susceptible to contract a particular illness.

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