New facilities located at UQ’s Gatton Campus will help researchers determine why some foods are better for us than others.
Professor Mike Gidley, Director of UQ’s Centre for Nutrition and Food Sciences, and Professor Wayne Bryden, from the School of Animal Studies, are currently conducting nutritional studies at the Centre for Advanced Animal Science.
“We are starting to use the CAAS facilities to run trials of human food components in pigs in order to increase our understanding of why certain foods have health-promoting properties,” Professor Gidley said.
“Over the next few months we will be carrying out studies aimed at understanding why whole cereal grains have certain health-promoting properties.
“If successful, we plan to use the same approach to improve our understanding of why fruits and vegetables are an important part of a healthy diet.”
Professor Gidley said while these trials only involved pigs, the findings would be applicable to humans.
“The digestive tract of pigs is quite similar to that of humans in several respects, and this makes them a good model for human digestive processes,” he said.
“In particular we look for features that differ between animals who have eaten feeds containing a health-benefiting component and those who have eaten a control feed.”
CAAS, a joint initiative between UQ and the Queensland Government, was officially opened by the Minister for Primary Industries and Fisheries, Tim Mulherin, on September 2.
The $33 million construction includes biosecurity containment rooms for disease and vaccine research, grouped and individual animal pens, a feed processing shed and cattle handling yards.
Professor Bryden said CAAS facilities made it possible to conduct this type of research project in Queensland.
“The state-of-the-art rooms being used allow environmental control of light and temperature and the monitoring of individual food intake by each pig, which is very important in nutritional studies,” Professor Bryden said.
MEDIA: Professor Gidley (07 3365 2145, m.gidley@uq.edu.au), Professor Bryden (07 3365 0250, w.bryden@uq.edu.au) or Penny Robinson at UQ Communications (07 3365 9723, penny.robinson@uq.edu.au)
