New approach to fighting obesity and diabetes

Scientists at the University of Queensland (UQ) are using specially designed equipment to determine how to produce food which is better for us, but still tastes good.

UQ researcher Professor Bob Gilbert and his team will be analysing the changes and varieties of starch in food, to further understand how it factors into Australia's obesity and diabetes epidemics.

"Starch supplies 50 % of food energy in the modern Australian diet, and up to 90 % in countries on Asian diets. A way forward would be to see what factors in the starches in our diets correspond to healthy digestibility," said Gilbert.

But uncovering which starches are good for us will not be easy.

"Starch and non-starch polysaccharides, which are important for fibre, have amazingly complex structures which are very hard to characterise."

New instrumentation, manufactured in Germany specifically for the study, will overcome the difficulties of measuring such complex structures, which Gilbert likens to the branching canopies of trees.

"No other equipment can separate "trees' of all sizes simultaneously, and at the same time measure quantities such as the weight, branching density and number of trees of a given size."

Meanwhile, recent developments at the university will help the scientists compute their results, according to Gilbert.

"The second breakthrough is in sophisticated new mathematical and experimental developments which enables us to make sense of a plethora of data."

The new machine was financed through the UQ major equipment fund and the mathematical and experimental breakthroughs by the Australian Research Council.

"These new techniques, developed by the Centre for Nutrition and Food Sciences at UQ, will provide the tools needed to produce foods which are both better for us nutritionally, and palatable to the consumer," Gilbert said.