The 1st ACRYRED Webinar on the topic of ”Reformulation” took place on the 6th of June and was chaired by Dr Christine Nowakowski, Principal Scientist – Agriculture and Food Solutions- General Mills (US).
Veronika Vavrová, MSc student (Supervised by Dr Zuzana Ciesarová and Dr Kristína Kukurová, National Agricultural and Food Centre, Food Research Institute – Slovakia (SK)) gave a talk entitled: “Valorisation of legumes by fermentation – impact on the potential of acrylamide formation”.
Veronika has just graduated from the Slovak University of Technology, Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology in the Master´s program in Food, Hygiene, Cosmetics and successfully defended her diploma thesis on Legumes in Functional Foods: Advantages and Risks. In the webinar, she presented part of her work related to the fermentation of legumes (peas, lentils, beans) by Actinomucor elegans and how this process affected the potential of acrylamide formation in related food products.
The second speaker was Dr Claudia Passos, Assistant Researcher from the University of Aveiro – Portugal (PT) with a presentation about: “Pectic polysaccharides as an acrylamide mitigation strategy – Competition between reducing sugars and sugar acids”.
Cláudia is presently an assistant researcher at the Department of Chemistry, University of Aveiro (UA), in the LAQV-REQUIMTE Research Unit, group of Food Quality & Technology and the GlycoFoodChem Lab. Received her PhD in Chemical Eng. in 2010 (UA). Published 5 book chapters, 44 articles, >2000 citations, an index h=21. Presently, she is responsible for 4 PhD students and supervised 11 MSc and 30 BSc students, 3 research fellows, and 1 research contract. Participated in scientific meetings with 77 posters and 60 oral presentations. Has focused her scientific performance on the application of green extraction processes, namely supercritical and microwave-assisted extraction, with a special interest in food byproducts. Acrylamide monitoring and development of mitigation strategies has also been a matter of study, that lead to her participation in cost action CA21149 (ACRYRED) as MC representative of Portugal.
