Purdue University’s Bruce Watkins

The Brains Behind B.A.S.E.

FoodTechSource: What is the purpose behind Purdue’s new food science center?

Bruce Watkins, Ph.D.: The mission of the center is to study nutraceuticals, phytochemicals and botanicals, and to create functional foods to benefit human health and companion animal health.

FTS: How large is EFPH?

Watkins: The center has 50 participating faculty and an executive committee of 16 faculty to represent five different schools at Purdue, and the school of medicine and the school of science at Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis.

FTS: What type of work are you engaged in?

Watkins: For the faculty, the center is a means for doing basic research in developing methods to deliver phytochemicals in consumer products; for industry it is a pipeline from discovery to consumer use. Graduate students use the center to gain further education on functional foods and the related compounds that make up these new foods, via courses like our functional foods course and a graduate course: “Lipids and Phytochemicals.”

FTS: Why is the center important at this moment in time?

“The center is a
means for doing
basic research
in developing methods
to deliver
phytochemicals
in consumer products;
it is a pipeline
from discovery
to consumer use.”

Watkins: There is broad consumer interest in foods that benefit health—self medication, alternative medicine—this is a consumer driven area of food development and health/biomedical research. So, to properly educate new graduates in food science, you need course material that talks about functional foods. So we started with course development and then expanded to include basic research. Federal agencies are developing programs and granting funds to do work on nutraceuticals and functional foods; the NIH is supporting botanical research centers and clinical research. It was a natural: we had a core of scientists from many different schools and departments that were doing various aspects of this work, so the center brings them together. For example, we have the analytical capabilities to analyze these compounds; we can support faculty who want to study their metabolism, their health benefits, how to deliver them in a food products.... We have a brand new food science building and a pilot laboratory and strong support from faculty that are food engineers to facilitate the whole process.

FTS: So, it is truly a functional foods center?

Watkins: Yes. We chose the name “Enhancing Foods to Protect Health” because we’re reevaluating the modification of foods. For years we’ve been modifying foods to reduce risk of degenerative disease and this certainly falls in line with the new dietary guidelines. We wanted a name that would really describe what we do compared to other centers.

FTS: How to you define “functional foods?”

Watkins: We have a Web site called “BASE” (www.purdue.edu/BASE); if you go to that site and select “Links,” then select “FS476,” which is the outline for our functional foods course, you’ll find the definitions we use for the terms functional food, designed food, nutraceutical and phytochemical. These terms seem to be used very loosely, and we need a common point of reference when discussing these matters.

Functional foods, for example, is defined as processed foods that deliver health protectants—“a food which affects physiological functions of the body in a targeted way so as to have positive physiological effects because it contains ingredients that may, in due course, justify health claims.” These can be milk products like yogurt, beverages containing dietary fiber, or even breakfast cereals containing oat bran.

Designed foods are raw fresh agricultural products that are developed specifically to contain supplemental nutraceuticals or phytochemicals which benefit health and reduce chronic disease risk. They can be created by altering the genetics of a plant using traditional methods of breeding or by molecular biology with GMOs. Or they can be developed by feeding poultry or livestock a feed containing supplements to enrich the products produced by these food-animals.

On the site, we define nutraceuticals as “nutrients and non-nutrient compounds in food that can be used to fortify a food or add to a processed food to make a functional food.” We also define phytochemicals “compounds found in plants;” these compounds would include lycopene, which is found in tomatoes, catechins which are found in green tea, and phytosterols and isoflavones, which are in soybeans. These are “limiting dietary components” limiting with respect to our individual risk for chronic disease, our dietary practices, and our lifestyle—heavy smoker, etc.

FTS: Has it gotten to the point with designed foods where researchers can set out to introduce a specific, beneficial trait to a food? Or are they limited to enhancing existing traits?

Watkins: When you’re talking about commercialization of designed foods, we’re at different levels of development. For example, we know a lot about omega-3 fatty acids and how they lower the risk of cardiovascular disease, and many companies want to modify foods to deliver more of these fatty acids in the diet. But our knowledge of omega-3s is much more advanced than, say, our knowledge of lycopene and its benefits. The difficulty in developing functional foods is in recognizing the compatibility issues—the synergisms and antagonisms—of phytochemicals and nutraceuticals with various types of compounds. The greatest success story has been fortifying milk with vitamin D. We knew something about calcium metabolism and it was a beautiful recognition of metabolism nutrition in the creation or enhancement of a food. We’re not as developed in this area as pertains to creating functional foods that deliver health protectants. Still, we know that foods can be a better source for health protectants than taking the nutirent on its own. So we need research to further describe, characterize and discover the roles of these health protectants so that we can properly deliver them in foods that will benefit the public.

“The difficulty
in developing
functional foods
is in recognizing
the compatibility
issues—
the synergisms
and antagonisms
of various types
of compounds”

FTS: I understand eggs are being used in the creation of designed foods.

Watkins: We have done work on modifying eggs by feeding chickens nutraceutical supplements to increase omega-3 fatty acids in the egg—to increase vitamin E compounds. The chicken is a good vehicle for doing that because the fat-soluble vitamins end up spilling over into the egg yolk. So, we can make an egg that will deliver the amounts of omega-3 fatty acids normally found in Salmon, for example, but at a much lower coast to the consumer.

FTS: What functional and designed foods are presently being developed at Purdue?

Watkins: The faculty involved at the center are working on numerous projects. There’s work using green tea as a vehicle to deliver nutraceuticals and phytochemicals that could reduce the risk of cancer. There are individuals working with conjugated linoleic acids—CLA—and trying to get it into foods and to study its health benefits. There are faculty looking at nutraceutical fatty acids to improve immune function in our companion animals. There are horticulture scientists studying how we can improve the nutrient content of tomatoes. There are faculty who are leaders in medicinal plant research—trying to identify how the active compounds in medicinal plants reduce oxidative stress in humans to control heart disease and cancer. There are many different research projects underway.

FTS: Regarding research, is it important for the government regulators to keeps hands off this research? Other than to provide funding?

Watkins: When we talk about phytochemicals and nutraceuticals, these are materials that have been a safe part of the diet for centuries. The difference comes when they are provided strictly as supplements, and I believe the role of food science centers like ours is one of being a resource for the public, to give them accurate information on such uses. The government regulators...they set the dietary standards.

FTS: What about Europe’s reluctance to have anything to do with designed foods— particularly genetically modified foods.

Watkins: GMOs?

FTS: Yes. Is it ignorance? Or do we have something to worry about?

Watkins: I don’t believe there’s any reason to worry. To me, GMOs give us an opportunity to create variety in our food supply—to develop higher quality food products in a shorter period of time by harnessing the technology of genetic engineering. There will always be groups that want organic foods. But there’s a need to be able to produce large quantities of food to feed the masses. It will take time for some groups to accept GMOs, as it has with other issues that have come up when agriculture has made a big jump in technology.

“Genetic
engineering
gives us an
opportunity to
develop higher
quality food products
in a shorter
period of time.”

FTS: Does your center use genetic manipulation?

Watkins: At our center we use both GMOs and non-GMOs in our research.

FTS: Do you work directly with industry or perform only government-funded research?

Watkins: We definitely work with corporations doing industrial-sponsored research, collaborating on developing a research product or new technology. That is the real reward for a faculty member: being able to benefit society in that way. But the federal grant moneys from USDA and NSF and NIH are important, too. Government and industry are both important funding sources for university faculty.

FTS: What direction do you want to move in with the center in the future?.

Watkins: One of the things we’re working on is trying to communicate directly to the public and through secondary education programs, providing information about functional foods and phytochemicals. And we do that through this BASE Web site. BASE stands for Biological Agricultural Science Education. And we’re going to continue to use that Web site and the consortium of faculty associated with it to communicate to the public about functional foods, phytochemicals, botanicals and to provide this new information about agricultural products, food science, health and biomedical research to high school students. I think this is an excellent way to stimulate interest in science and engineering so these young students pursue careers in these fields and perhaps discover the cures for cancer and develop wiz-bang engineering to improve our lives. That’s a vital element, because we want to sustain a high level of interest in science in our future generations. I think our faculty is in an excellent position to accomplish this.

FTS: Keeping the public informed and educated is a noble endeavor.

Watkins: Right. Fundamentally it’s bringing people together: teachers, college professors, people from industry to create and deliver education materials to the public and to students at secondary education. That is our purpose.