The Rowett Institute

Mycotoxins are toxic fungal contaminants which are often found in cereal foods. This project addressees an important food safety issue, the contamination of cereal foods with mycotoxins which are produced by fungi in agricultural production. This project aims to minimize the risk to consumers from mycotoxin contamination in cereal foods by improving our understanding of the sources of contamination in primary cereal production and processing and by assessing human exposure and risk through biomarker analysis.

The Scottish Government's Climate Change Plan includes reference to carbon sequestration options for agriculture. This project research supports hemp, a climate resilient crop, for stimulating Scottish farming sector to run greenhouse gas removal activities, identifying opportunities for the Scottish food and drink sector to promote sustainability and by understanding nutrition sufficiency and consumer acceptance of hemp food as part of low carbon footprint diet.

Food safety requires testing of materials entering the food chain. Toxins which could impact consumer health derive from natural or man-made sources. Current testing of food products relies on chemical and immunological techniques which may be unable to detect compounds related to toxins or toxin metabolites generated by enzymatic activities in the natural environment or in the gut and liver of the consumer.This project aims to extend the current range of analytical techniques by establishing cell-based assay systems which can identify "masked" and emerging toxins. These analyses also support the development of novel immunological, chemical and biosensor assays for toxin detection.

This project aims to inform transformative policies to build food and nutrition security in Scotland. The research reviews and generates evidence, and recommends new ways of providing dignified options for Scotland’s more vulnerable residents to consume healthy food and drink in ways that provide opportunities for Scotland’s food and drink sector to operate in an environmentally and financially sustainable manner.

We are consolidating data to map production, imports and exports of fresh and processed foods for major Scottish agri-food supply chains, and map these against purchasing and intake data, as well as dietary recommendations. We also model the impacts and requirements of a transition to more healthy and sustainable scenarios of production and consumption in Scotland. 

This project aims to identify the most effective food swaps, based on an individual’s diet, that makes their shopping basket more healthy and environmentally sustainable; and monitor in real-time whether physiological, psychological and environmental factors, at an individual level, affect the adoption of such food swaps and make individual diets healthier and more environmentally sustainable, in young adults. 

This project reviews existing community interventions designed to support healthy eating, identifying effective elements that people from low-income households value and engage with. These elements combine with strategies shown to effectively helping people to change behaviour, and used to create a new holistic healthy eating intervention for delivery to clients from low income families through the social prescribing service.

We explore dietary choices people make when they switch to a more plant-based diet. Plant-based diets are viewed as healthier and sustainable, but little is known about the plant-based foods people choose in place of meat and why. We conduct a series of studies to explore personal and social barriers, both perceived and real, to eating less meat and the health and environmental impacts when meat consumption and purchasing patterns vary.

This project aims to generate insights on the economics of higher-value status food and drink products. The research quantifies the extent to which such products hold a price premium and face higher production costs than standard products, examines the key factors are in achieving a higher/lower gross margin, understands the impact of EU exit and other developments in international trade; and identifies opportunities to develop and promote them.

The Scottish diet remains poor quality and a main factor in driving unhealthy weight. To reduce the burden of diet related disease, this project explores public attitudes towards nutritional factors, namely food additives (specifically artificial sweeteners) and dietary fibre. The purpose of the study is to understand how dietary fibre influences appetite and food intake and then, how sweeteners may disrupt this response. We are implementing two human diet trials to investigate these key dietary components on physiological mechanisms associated with appetite control for a healthy weight. We also examine the changes in the profile of bacteria that inhabit the gut and the associated metabolic products. We investigate the effects on human blood metabolites such as blood sugar and circulating changes in hormones that are thought to influence appetite.