Trinity College is co-ordinating a €16.5 million EU-wide research study of obesity and what can be done about it. Science Editor Dick Ahlstrom reports
Algae, or at least parts of it, may soon be on the menu of those who aspire to a healthy diet. Algae on the dinner plate is just one of the changes that an ambitious new research programme hopes to introduce as a way to help reduce obesity in the EU.
Research centres across Europe have banded together in a new effort to tackle the growing threat of obesity. The €16.5 million project has brought together a wide range of scientific disciplines all focused on ways to stop or reduce the health impacts associated with our increasingly irresponsible dietary habits.
Researchers in Trinity College, Dublin have taken on the challenging role of co-ordinating this large-scale programme known as LIPGENE. It brings together researchers in 25 labs across Europe all working towards a common goal, to reduce the health risks associated with a number of obesity-related conditions known collectively as "metabolic syndrome".
"A factor of obesity is that people get a combination of a number of problems at the one time," says Trinity's Prof Michael Gibney in his explanation of metabolic syndrome.
These include high blood pressure, changes in the amounts and types of fat circulating in the blood and conditions such as gout.
Another key health impact and one being faced by a rapidly growing number of people is insulin resistance and Type II diabetes.
"That is a big thing," says Prof Gibney, given the alarming rise in incidence right across the western world.
Nutritionists and health specialists have discussed metabolic syndrome for decades but the term is gaining wider currency with the increase in those affected by it, an estimated 31 million EU citizens by 2010, says Prof Gibney.
"It has only really come out now with people recognising that obesity is a real problem."
Prof Gibney and colleague Dr Helen Roche, both from the Nutrition Unit in the college's Department of Clinical Medicine, devised the work programme for the five-year LIPGENE project.
They first proposed it five years ago but it was considered "too aggressive and too ambitious" under the then EU funding programmes.
However, larger projects became possible under the EU's current research funding scheme, Framework Programme Six, and so LIPGENE was finally sanctioned with the community providing €12.5 million and €4 million from other public and private partners.
LIPGENE is all about us, about how we live, the foods we eat and why we eat them. It is about why so many of the food choices we regularly make are unwise and it is about making it easier for us to eat foods that are better for us.
"The whole philosophy behind it is if Europeans have a bad diet, there are two things we can do.
"We can change their diet or we can let them eat what they are eating now but make it better for them," explains Prof Gibney.
Getting people to make the right choices for themselves seems insurmountable so LIPGENE is directed at the latter option.
"Technology can solve the problem," Prof Gibney believes. "We are trying to find technological solutions which we can incorporate into the primary food production systems so people don't have to make \ changes themselves."
The algae research is a classic example of this approach. Most people accept that Omega-3 fish oils can help reduce the levels of saturated fats in the blood, bad cholesterols and other substances.
Yet the fish themselves build up levels of these long-chain polyunsaturated fats (n-3PUFA) by eating algae.
Plant biotechnologists working under the LIPGENE programme hope to isolate and clone the algal metabolic pathway responsible for these oils and then insert it in the linseed plant, delivering a fish oil supplement without the fish.
"From an ecological point of view this is terrific," says Prof Gibney. Fish stocks are under threat and few people eat enough fish to benefit even if stocks were plentiful. With this approach consumers would have a good source of n-3PUFA without the environmental impacts associated with heavy fishing.
LIPGENE is also focusing in on our genes and their involvement in obesity, says Prof Gibney.
"We hope to be able to predict what individuals will develop metabolic syndrome if they follow a specific diet and have a given gene pattern," he says.
Some individuals are highly sensitive to insulin resistance and this has been associated with a single gene.
"That is only one gene," says Prof Gibney. "We want to look at 150 genes and map them" - all of them expected to play some role in obesity and the development of metabolic syndrome.
Animal husbandry will also form part of the LIPGENE research programme, explains Prof Gibney.
The focus here is on dairy fats, a key cause of cholesterol-raising saturated fatty acids in the blood.
Researchers will alter the bacterial populations in the stomachs of cows, helping to alter the types of fat formed in the milk.
Dietary changes also offer a way to change fat levels in milk, allowing new kinds of milk and butter to be delivered to market.
Alteration of the fat composition in poultry is another aim, with changes coming by feeding poultry with modified oils.
Another vital strand of the programme involves detailed social and economic studies of food consumption.
Will people accept healthier food products if produced using genetic modification technology? Will they alter food purchases if they feel at risk of metabolic syndrome?
Economists will also have to study the numbers associated with this whole area, says Prof Gibney.
They must study the costs to society of doing nothing, of introducing drug therapies to treat metabolic syndrome, and of changing food production technology down on the farm.
To learn more about the LIPGENE project, visit its website at: www.lipgene.tcd.ie