Having your cake and eating it: The role of grain properties on digestibility and glyceamic response to sweet bakery products

随着肥胖和2型糖尿病对全球健康的巨大影响，迫切需要降低富含碳水化合物的烘焙产品的血糖效力的策略。从甜烘焙产品中去除糖并不简单，而且往往会影响产品的质量和味道。然而，降低富含淀粉的成分（磨过的谷物）的血糖效能可以为减轻甜烘焙产品中添加糖的不利影响提供新的解决方案。在这个项目中，你将调查不同谷物类型的碳水化合物（淀粉）消化率如何以及为什么不同，并评估缓慢消化的谷物是否可以调节对甜烘焙产品的总体血糖反应。这个主题，多学科的项目涵盖食品科学，碳水化合物生物化学，营养学和人体生理学，并提供了大量的机会发展跨学科的新技能：你将学习如何研究淀粉消化的复杂过程，并应用这些方法来研究谷物的类型和颗粒大小如何影响最终产品的消化率。然后，您将接受其他补充技术的培训（例如，显微镜，量热法，粒度分析），并使用这些专业工具来了解食品消化率的基础机制。您还将学习如何进行涉及人类参与者的研究，并将有机会进行人体研究来测试您从实验室研究中产生的假设。与工业合作伙伴一起工作，您将帮助他们设计实习研究，并在真实的商业环境中获得战略创新和研发的经验。您还将获得与不同受众交流您的研究，参加国际会议和在高质量期刊上发表您的研究结果的经验。

With the huge global health impact of obesity and type 2 diabetes, there is an urgent need for strategies that reduce the glycaemic potency of carbohydrate-rich bakery products. Removing sugar from sweet bakery products is not straightforward and tends to affect the product quality as well as taste. However, lowering the glycaemic potency of the starch-rich ingredients (milled grains) could provide new solutions to mitigate the adverse effects of added sugar in sweet bakery products.In this project you will investigate how and why the carbohydrate (starch) digestibility differs between different grain types and assess if slowly digested grains can modulate the overall glycaemic response to sweet bakery products.This topical, multidisciplinary project spans food science, carbohydrate biochemistry, nutrition and human physiology and provides plenty of opportunities to develop new skills across disciplines: You will learn how to study the complex processes involved in starch digestion and apply these approaches to study how the type of grain and particle size affects the digestibility of the final product. You will then be trained in other complementary techniques (e.g., microscopy, calorimetry, particle size analysis) and use these specialist tools to understand the mechanisms underpinning the digestibility of food products. You will also learn how to conduct research involving human participants, and will have the opportunity to undertake a human study to test your hypotheses emerging from laboratory studies.Working with the industrial partner, you will help to design a placement study with them and gain experience of strategic innovation and research and development within a real commercial environment. You will also gain experience in communicating your research to different audiences, participate in international conferences and publishing your results in high quality journals.