Cereals and Europe

Programme Lay-out

Download Programme as PDF.

Tuesday, 24th March, afternoon

AACC INTERNATIONAL WHOLE GRAIN TASK FORCE WORKSHOP

The AACC International Whole Grains Task Force (WGTF) began its work three years ago, in December 2005.  In that time it has addressed a number of issues.  The WGTF works through conference calls with academics, industry, non-profit agency, and government participants. There are core participants who regularly attend the calls. In addition, there are individuals with special interests or expertise who may participate from time to time. There is an attempt to have various industries and areas of the world represented. Furthermore, the work of the WGTF is strengthened by smaller expert task forces convened to deal with issues specific to processing of traditional whole grain foods barley, bulgur, and liming of corn (nixtimalization) or participation by regulatory people from groups such as Health Canada.

The role of the WGTF is to try to use science to answer questions that are important for moving the whole grain agenda forward with the following objectives:

• To encourage the use of whole grain products in many venues.
• To provide a science background as the basis for promulgation of rule-making by entities that label and encourage whole grain product use.
• To set definable scientific standards which help industry with product formulation and labelling guidelines. This will help minimize proliferation of multiple standards that will paralyze consumers and manufacturers.
• To provide the consumer greater clarity in the marketplace in order to select whole grain containing foods.
• To support the use of foods made with a blend of whole and enriched grains, but that contribute significant whole grain content to the diet – not just foods that are entirely or almost entirely manufactured with whole grains.  This will enable manufacturers to add whole grain to their lines and will allow consumers to adapt to products containing whole grains.
• To use science to help make certain that industry develops whole grain products which deliver the nutritional advantage and are not simply functionally expedient.

While much of the activity has had a North American focus up until now, the WGTF has felt the need to be complemented by a European discussion forum. This is timely when EFSA will be taking decisions about generic nutrition and health claims very soon. The forum could review and comment the decisions and questions by the AACC Forum, and raise questions which are important for European developments. With this workshop, WGTF is following up on discussions held in Europe as well as in the USA on a regular basis.  The workshop will be prepared with the input of members of the Healthgrain project, ICC and AACC International-Cereals&Europe. Those interested in participating should indicate this on their conference registration form.

Wednesday 25th March, morning

GRAINITY PROJECT SATELLITE SYMPOSIUM

GRAINITY - Rye, Oat and wholegrain, the Nordic opportunity

The overall objective of the Grainity project is to strengthen the cereal based food industry in the Nordic countries in the development of functional whole grain food products.
The specific aims are:

• to increase the competitiveness of the rye, oat and whole grain based Nordic food industries by building a platform to fully exploit the on-going scientific research
• to provide facts and shared Nordic views to harmonise and substantiate nutritional and health claims of rye, oat and other whole grain foods.
• to identify joint R&D needs for bringing new types of rye, oat and other whole grain products at the market
• to extend the Nordic collaboration in functional cereal foods to the Baltic countries

GRAINITY is organising a satellite symposium during the Whole Grain Global Summit: “Nordic experience and approaches on using grains for health”,focusing on functional whole grain rye and oat food products.

The symposium will be open to all conference participants at an additional fee of € 50,-. Check the appropriate box on the registration form.

Wednesday 25th March, afternoon

OPENING PLENARY SESSION

• Targets and recommendations from WGS2- have they been achieved?
  Len Marquart, Minneapolis, US
• Whole Grains & Health, Epidemiology vs. Interventions
  Chris Seal, Newcastle University, UK
• Can the demands for Wholegrain Foods be met by technological processes?
  Michael Gusko, Kampfmeyer Mühlen, Germany
• Consumer and Market drivers for Wholegrain Foods - tbc
  
• Regulatory aspects for Whole Grain & Wholegrain Foods – EU vs. US
  Julie Jones, College of St. Catherine, USA – Nino Binns, NB Consulting, Ireland

PARALLEL SESSIONS

The Parallel Sessions will continue the discussions laid out in the plenary session.

Each session will provide an interactive forum clearly including nutritional and technological presentations. Every session will feature one or two invited speakers and six oral presentations selected from the submitted abstracts.
Feed back of the Parallel Sessions will be assembled and presented in the Closing Plenary Session.

You’re kindly invited to send in your abstracts for oral presentations and posters on topics that are closely related to the issues mentioned above.

Thursday 26th March, morning

Parallel Session 1:  Nutrition, health effects, physiology, epidemiology, mechanisms

Chairs: Susan Jebb, Margaret Bath, Filip Arnaut

Keynote speakers:

• Mohsen Meydani, Jean Mayer USDA HNRCA at Tufts University, USA
   

Parallel Session 2: Grain properties and technologies; sensory challenges of whole grain foods

Chairs: Kaisa Poutanen, Beth Arndt, Aliette Verel

Processing is a prerequisite for availability of cereal foods. Cereal processes were long optimised for products containing only grain endosperm. The use of also outer grain layers poses technological challenges, not in the least for delivery of sensory quality appealing to consumers. In this session, the cereal material science will be in centre, in terms of tuning raw material quality, development of new technologies, process induced changes on grain constituents, and effects on sensory quality and consumer liking.

Keynote speakers will focus on the following topics:

• Peter Shewry, BBSRC, UK - Opportunities of raw material variation
• Xavier Rouau, Supagro-INRA, France - Grain fractionation revised for new healthy ingredients
• Raija-Liisa Heiniö, VTT, Finland - What makes the difference in the sensory quality of whole grain foods?

 

Friday 27th March, morning

Parallel Session 3: Phytochemicals, Processing and Analysis

Chairs:  Rui Hai Lui, Jan de Vries, Michela Petronio

This session will focus on the effects of processing on phytochemicals from cereals and available analytical methods that properly take into account the total concentration of those phytochemicals and the consequent bioavailability for the consumer.

Keynote speakers:

• Vincenzo Fogliano, University of Napoli "Federico II", Italy - Technological innovations that increase the bioavailability of phytochemicals from cereals.  
• Peter Hollman, Wageningen University, the Netherlands - Bioavailability of lignans: pharmacokinetics and effects of processing 
  

Parallel Session 4: effect of new introductions, consumer response, regulations and labeling EU vs. USA (and elsewhere?)

Chairs: Julie Jones, Len Marquart, Clare Leonard, Rob Hamer

Keynote speakers:

• David Richardson, DPR Nutrition, UK - Scientific substantiation of the health benefits of wholegrain

• Trish Griffiths, Go Grains Health&Nutrition Ltd, Australia

Thursday 26th March, afternoon

INTERACTIVE SESSION

Workshops

The four topical moderator-led workshops will focus on the themes and contents of the parallel sessions.  Active participation of the conference delegates will be required, which will be ensured by organising separate registrations for the workshops and limit this to those who are actively contributing.  Once the seats for “active” participation are filled, others can register as well but only as observers.

Registration for the workshops will only be opened a couple of weeks before the conference.
Participants are required to do some homework by preparing answers to provocative questions and statements generated by using the Healthgrain Industrial Platform and the AACC International – Cereals&Europe industry networks and that will be distributed prior to the conference.
The workshop leaders will compile the replies and the resulting statements will be published on the website at the time of workshop registration.

Poster sessions

Posters will be on display throughout the conference, with a special focus during the workshops.

Workshops and poster sessions will take place in the same area, allowing for easy communication between presenters and workshop participants. For the poster sessions, a particular time will be assigned to a specific topic (see parallel sessions). During that time, authors would be required to stand with their posters to discuss and answer questions. The timing for those specific poster sessions will be different to the timing for the related workshops.

Friday 27th March, afternoon

CLOSING PLENARY SESSION

The closing plenary session will feature one or two key note speakers.  Reporting from the parallel sessions, posters and workshops will lead to conclusions, recommendations and action points for the future.