Basic Scientific Discovery
Successful health claim substantiation begins with a clear characterisation of the active constituents within a food product.  Nutran has extensive experience in characterising bioactive ingredients gained through years of active partnerships with the food industry.  This, coupled with our experience in flavour and texture research.
Flavour & Texture Research & Bioactive Compound Characterisation
Sensory lab and a fully equipped industry-standard pilot kitchen and food preparation area
Molecular Nutrition & Molecular Biology
Applying omics technologies to uncover human’s responses to food and bioactive constituents at a molecular level, alongside fully equipped facilities for molecular biology
Flavour and Texture Research
Flavour and texture are two of the main factors influencing food preference and choice. Creating healthy food products with the optimal flavour and texture characteristics while meeting consumer demands represents a major challenge for product development. 

 

With our extensive expertise in flavour and texture research,  you will have access to our latest flavour and texture labs  alongside our sensory and consumer psychology labs. This will enable you to create delicious healthy products that fit your consumers expectations.

Analysis
We offer bespoke instrumental analysis for a number of sample matrices using validated standard operating procedures. Routinely employed analyses include:
Technical Infrastructure
We will provide you with access to state of the art facilities including:
Sensory Lab

Our fully equipped sensory lab meets all your needs for product development and testing.

 

Molecular Nutrition

Molecular nutrition research is supported by access to state-of-the-art technology at Northumbria University. The laboratories provide facilities to conduct studies in; Cell Biology and Genetics, Microbiology and Molecular Biology. NU-OMICS provides DNA sequencing infrastructure, using automated sample preparation and sequencing power of Illumina sequencing by synthesis and PacBio single molecular real time sequencing. Further Omic provision sees Nutran and molecular nutrition studies having access to proteomic and metabolomics profiling services with state of the art ThermoFisher Q-Exactive Quadrupole-orbitrap Mass Spectrometers, alongside other mass, liquid and gas chromatography platforms.

Selected Publications
  1. Starowicz, M., Koutsidis, G. and Zieliński, H., 2017. Sensory analysis and aroma compounds of buckwheat containing products—a review. Critical reviews in food science and nutrition, pp.1-13.
  1. Dack, R.E., Black, G.W. and Koutsidis, G., 2017. The effect of Maillard reaction products and yeast strain on the synthesis of key higher alcohols and esters in beer fermentations. Food chemistry, 232, pp.595-601.
  2. Peinado, I., Miles, W. and Koutsidis, G., 2016. Odour characteristics of seafood flavour formulations produced with fish by-products incorporating EPA, DHA and fish oil. Food chemistry, 212, pp.612-619.
  3. Peinado, I., Girón, J., Koutsidis, G. and Ames, J.M., 2014. Chemical composition, antioxidant activity and sensory evaluation of five different species of brown edible seaweeds. Food research international, 66, pp.36-44.
  1. Periche, A., Koutsidis, G. and Escriche, I., 2014. Composition of antioxidants and amino acids in Stevia leaf infusions. Plant foods for human nutrition, 69(1), pp.1-7.