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• Diet and Health Research Industry Club (DRINC)
• DRINC: Background

Strategic partnerships and 'research and technology clubs':

DRINC: Background

Increased investment

Consultations carried out by BBSRC with the food industry and academics have identified diet and health as an area for increased investment in research activity. This would underpin the needs of the food industry to fulfil the increasing appetite of the public for healthier foods and help the UK to remain internationally competitive in this sector.

Interdisciplinary research

Substantial opportunities for innovative research exist across the food supply chain. However, diet and health is now the primary driver for all businesses in the chain, from primary producers to retailers. The research required to address these opportunities is interdisciplinary in nature and needs to bring together biosciences, physical sciences and engineering.

High quality research

BBSRC has formed DRINC to unite the relevant academic expertise to work on innovative problems of industrial relevance, with mechanisms put in place to ensure that UK companies can derive competitive advantage.

The Club will support high quality research into diet and health within UK Universities and research institutes and will aim to obtain underpinning knowledge that will provide valuable results in the long-term, enabling the UK food industry to develop and deliver new foods of benefit to the consumer.

Funding pot

The Club operates by establishing a funding pot to support academic research. 10% of the funding pot (approximately £1M) comes from a consortium of food companies (Club members). BBSRC will make a significant funding contribution and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Medical Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council have agreed to support research proposals that fall within Council's remit to give a total funding pot of £12M over 5 years.

General research areas and scientific challenges

Research leading to an improved understanding of healthier diets

For example research relating to:

• understanding the functionality of food components so that the impact of reducing those components potentially detrimental to human health or increasing beneficial components can be understood
• understanding the basis of taste, texture and flavour at a fundamental level to enable reductions in food components e.g. salt, sugar and fat levels without adversely effecting consumer response
• understanding the influence of food structure on human nutrition and physiology to enable foods to be designed with precise nutritional and physiological properties to enable a healthy diet
• understanding the methodology of satiety and investigating the role of food constituents, particularly minor food components, on energy intake via the impact on satiety

Research relating to bioactives in food that benefit health

For example research to improve:

• our understanding of the metabolism (metabolome and fluxome) in organisms that contribute to the human diet
• separation methods for bioactives
• technologies to protect and deliver bioactives
• ensuring beneficial bioactives are delivered to the point where they can be used. This includes active delivery, for example, of nutritional/nutriceutical benefit to the stomach and gastrointestinal tract or flavour to the nose and mouth
• our understanding of the mechanism of bioactives including the biology of underlying ‘gut bioactives’
• the identification and validation of biomarkers to demonstrate the efficacy of bioactives

These are the general research areas for the Club, however, individual calls may focus on specific priorities.

Members

• Britvic Soft Drinks Ltd
• Campden BRI
• Coca-Cola
• Danisco
• Danone
• GlaxoSmithKline
• Kraft Foods  
• Leatherhead Food Research
• Marks & Spencer plc
• National Association of British and Irish Millers
• Nestlé
• PepsiCo UK and Ireland
• The Sugar Bureau
• Unilever
• United Biscuits

Steering Group and Management

The Steering Group establishes the nature of research to be funded and assesses applications before making funding recommendations to the Research Councils.

Dr Claire Hughes - Marks & Spencer
Dr Paul Berryman - Research Associations
Dr Karen Cunningham - Coca-Cola
Dr Mark Fowler - Nestlé
Professor Peter Fryer - University of Birmingham
Professor Stephen Harding - University of Nottingham
Dr Harry van der Hijden - Unilever
Dr Henglong Hu - GlaxoSmithKline
Professor John Mathers - University of Newcastle
Professor Clare Mills - Institute of Food Research
Professor Peter Morgan - Rowett Research Institute
Professor Hilary Powers - University of Sheffield
Professor Peter Rogers - University of Bristol
Dr Julian Stowell - Danisco

The Club is managed by BBSRC and research projects will be awarded as BBSRC grants using peer review processes as fully public funded research. BBSRC has appointed an External Coordinator to work with the academic community in the development of project proposals, monitor progress of funded projects and facilitate networking between the funded research groups and industry (contact details below).

Previous calls

Grants have now been awarded through the second round of funding.

2007

10 projects were funded totalling just over £4M to which EPSRC and MRC have contributed.

The call also funded 9 targeted priority studentships.

2008

7 projects were funded totalling just over £4M to which MRC have contributed.

The call also funded 9 targeted priority studentships.

A summary of the research projects funded through DRINC is available in the downloads section of this page.

For information on calls for applications see DRINC: Apply for funding

Contact