Multi-Actor Research and Innovation-Approaches for Functional Food
Funding Program:
Horizon Europe
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
Call:
HORIZON-MSCA-2022-SE-01
Type of Action:
HORIZON TMA MSCA Staff Exchange
Duration:
2023-2027
EC Funding:
€ 1.600.800,00
Pioneering Functional Foods Through Collaborative Innovation
The growing demand for food comes with the challenge of ensuring nutritional value, safety and sustainability. Functional Foods – those with scientifically proven health benefits – are essential for addressing modern dietary needs, yet their development lacks a structured scientific approach. At the same time, preserving bioactive compounds while maintaining product stability remains a major hurdle for the food industry.
RIA4FOOD is setting a new standard for functional food design through scientific collaboration and knowledge exchange. By leveraging sea buckthorn berries as a rich source of bioactive compounds, the project integrates advanced dietary and disease models with metabolomic and proteomic analysis to unlock their full potential. Machine learning will optimise ingredient concentrations to maximise health benefits, while innovative processing techniques, such as osmotic dehydration, will ensure product stability. Through a multidisciplinary approach, RIA4FOOD fosters collaboration among researchers, food producers, and industry stakeholders, creating a sustainable, science-driven food value chain.
Our role in the project
As leaders in Sustainability Assessment, Foodscale Hub is:
- Conducting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impact of food production from cultivation to consumption.
- Analysing environmental and economic impact by integrating sustainability data with financial indicators to optimize value chains.
- Identifying environmental hotspots and developing mitigation strategies to reduce negative effects.
- Building predictive tools that support decision-making for food producers and farmers by providing data-driven sustainability assessment insights.
- Assessing nutritional and health sustainability by evaluating the long-term health benefits of functional food consumption.
RIA4FOOD by numbers
- 9 partners
- 5 countries
- 99 secondments
- 3 human-relevant disease models
- 18 -omics analyses
- 2 new functional food prototypes
- 1 osmosis sustainability algorithm
- 1 nutritional algorithm
- 1 LCA report