Laurent Bazinet, academic member of Nutrevent 2015 Steering Committee and Professor at the Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods at the Université of Laval, Canada, answered our questions :
Mr. Bazinet, as an academic stakeholder, what is your opinion on the trends and top challenges faced by R&D innovation in Health and Nutrition?
R&D innovation in Health and Nutrition is definitely facing many challenges, and the main challenges would be to find new technologies, in order to answer the actual health concerns. The second challenge would be to demonstrate the efficiency of the new products, in a way that the consumer could easily appreciate. Due to the population obviously ageing and its growing concerns on balanced diets, Nutrition and Cognitive decline are the trends driving Innovation.
As a member of our Steering Committee, you are particularly involved in NutrEvent’s design. Could you tell us a bit more about NutrEvent’s particularities ?
NutrEvent is very unique, particularly because it makes the link between applied research and real marketing success stories, in several kinds of Nutrition and Health products. NutrEvent has a very singular positioning, that indeed, allows the event to be a leader in a promising field: spreading knowledge on research advances in neutraceuticals and in functional foods.
Regarding the event content, what is the NutrEvent that you are expecting to see on June 17th and 18th? Do you have favorite conference themes to be addressed?
We have a range of professional profiles that come to NutrEvent with very different and complementary expectations: some will look for business partners, others will be looking forward to attending the conferences. For my part and as an academic actor, I am expecting to be in contact with companies interested in collaborating with the academic sector on their innovations. And regarding the conference part, I have a preference for Track 1 “Food matrix and active compounds; what’s the impact” and “Vision 2030: exploring the potential of proteins new sources”
