91快活林

The initial application for project funding determined the following key objectives:

Health and Food Service Curriculum Development

The France-England Interreg region is home to two institutions with an international reputation in the fields of Food and Health, Food Service and Culinary Arts. The project enables the two partners to work together through the creation of a cross-border bilingual master curriculum in order to provide the food service sector with highly trained young professionals. This will foster the scientific background of these new curricula through partner peer review exchange and sharing of expertise at all stages of the project.

Research Project “Novel Health and Food Service Technologies for Disadvantaged Communities”

This aimed at providing innovative technical procedures to produce affordable meals with an enhanced nutritional value. Research was based on soups, casseroles, Irish stews, hot pots, fish, meat patties, vegetables, liquid products and pastries utilising affordable raw ingredients (e.g. low grade meat cuts). It focused on new processes for traditional dishes and on new novel meals. This cross-border research program used advanced engineering and food safety expertise to take advantage of latest developments in minimally processing technologies.

Health and Food Business Services

A Business and Technology Supporting Program was planned for small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in the Health and Food service sector in South England and the Picardie region of France and in the regions along the Channel French coast. A series of seminars and workshops in both regions were settled in order to support the management skills and to disseminate food science and techniques to the appropriate need of SME and the participants business.

Communications Strategy - public and social engagement activities

A communications strategy was also developed at this stage to promote and disseminate the activities of the project through a joint website, periodic newsletters and a series of events to include both a mid-project and an end of project conference.

At a later stage of the application, at the request of ERDF and Interreg, a fourth element was added to the proposal to incorporate a series of public and social engagement activities to promote both the findings of the project research and to encourage a more healthy diet in the populations of the regions concerned.

Health and Food Service Curriculum Development

This objective was achieved through the development and delivery to the first cohort of students the MSc Food Services and Wellbeing Management over the duration of the Hotpot project during the period 2009 – 2013.

Research Project “Novel Health and Food Service Technologies for Disadvantaged Communities”

Outcomes of the research project were as follows:

• Recipes were developed initially by the University of 91快活林 in the Culinary Arts Studio research facility and were processed and analysed by the scientist at LaSalle Beauvais.
• Over the course of the project a variety of topics were explored, including current themes and issues in food policy, consumer behaviour in food and beverage service, design of healthy and sustainable food concepts for restaurants and the art of responsible eating.
• Cooking is a heat treatment whose purpose is to transform a food product into an appetizing and nutritious food but also free of pathogens. Like any heat treatment it induces a number of biological transformations such as the inactivation of enzymes and destruction of harmful microorganisms as well as chemical transformations such as caramelisation.
• Reactions of hydrolysis and oxidation and Maillard reactions were observed and recorded. Some of these changes may have a beneficial effect by increasing the digestibility of protein and starches the destruction of anti-nutritional factors giving beneficial effects. The application of heat treatments can also lead to side effects like denaturation or destruction of nutrients vitamins and proteins with the production of some Neoformed Compounds (NFC) some of which are suspected to be carcinogens. These phenomena depend on the level of the temperature and the processing time, therefore the use of microwaves treatments need to be investigated and evaluated in a scientific setting.
• Microwave heating is related to the absorption of electromagnetic waves by molecules constituting the matter and in particular the water molecule. The particularity of microwaves compared to conventional processes is the mode of intake of energy. The main impact is a rapid increase in product temperature and greater homogeneity in the distribution of heat inside the product. Therefore, the duration of treatment is generally shorter than in conventional heating. In the food industry microwaves are used for operations such as drying, cooking, pasteurisation and tempering amongst other things. In contrast in catering microwave ovens are used almost exclusively for reheating ready cooked dishes. This practice is largely due to the lack of knowledge on the potential of this technology for cooking and to the absence of procedures for carrying out traditional recipes in microwave oven. There have been no systematic studies that aim is to adapt various types of traditional recipes to microwave with a view to preserving the nutritional quality.

Six dishes were selected for this research program over the last three years: meat hotpot, fish in white wine sauce, braised beef burgundy style, beef meat patties, frozen mixed vegetables and pastry cream. Two dishes were reviewed each year through the following task breakdown.

• Task 1: To establish kinetics of vitamins spoilage during conventional and Microwave cooking.
• Task 2: To establish kinetics of NFCs formation during conventional and Microwave cooking.
• Task 3: To establish kinetics of inactivation of E. faecalis during Conventional and Microwave cooking.
• Task 4: To develop predictive model of kinetics of inactivation and growing of E. faecalis during and after Microwave cooking.
• Task 5: To develop predictive model of kinetics of inactivation and growing of food-borne pathogens during and after Microwave cooking.
• Task 6: To develop predictive model of kinetics of inactivation and growing of spoilage microorganisms during and after Microwave cooking.
• Task 7: To use experimental design in order to develop modelling strategies for Microwave cooking.
• Task 8: To Validate the models.
• Task 9: To produce optimized microwave-cooking process for each dish.

Health and Food Business Services

This objective was achieved through a series of seminars being designed to help all types of food and food service businesses to address a number of current issues that impact on both the business in its day to day operations and its market that can eventually lead to a more ethical and healthy provision, improved production and service techniques, higher revenues and increased profitability.

Each seminar consisted of a three hour tutor lead workshop which was then followed up by a free consultancy visit to the participant’s business operation by a member of the HOTPOT seminar team to explore on a one to one basis the application of techniques presented and discussed during the seminar. 

Communications Strategy - public and social engagement activities

• Hotpot Roadshow - Microwave Zone participating in both 91快活林 and Hastings Food Festivals
• Microwave cookery event to year 30 students at Peacehaven Community School, since which two of their students have joined CCBH to train as chefs
• Christmas with Microwave cookery demonstration to 200 year six pupils at Ocklynge Junior School, Eastbourne in partnership with the NHS Healthy Weights project
• Microwave cookery training event for Outreach workers in liaison with 91快活林 & Hove Food Partnership
• Microwave cookery ‘Lunch Club’ event for mentally handicapped and homeless people in partnership 91快活林 & Hove Speak Out Advocacy Project 
• Development of the and supporting LaSalle Beauvais with the UK side of their website projects

Visit our Menu Museum page to find out more about our involvement in the creation of this resource. By collating menus, researchers and students are able to review and analyse trends in menu design, marketing, pricing and even history of menu design.