The research activities at the Department of Nutrition and Food Quality Assessment are focused on aspects of nutrition and health protection, microbial aspects of food safety and quality, and chemistry, analysis and assessment of food.
The main challenges:
- study of health-benefit compounds of food; their preventive and therapeutic properties,
- primary food monitoring, and preparation of functional foods and food supplements,
- bioactive compounds, food additives, nutraceuticals, and functional food testing in vitro and in vivo, including clinical trials,
- isolation and characterization of bioactive compounds from plant raw materials; analysis of antioxidant properties of primary food sources; determination of biological activity (antimicrobial, antimutagenic, genotoxic) of natural and synthetic compounds,
- qualitative and quantitative comparison of gut microbiota in vegetarians and omnivores,
- evaluation of the role of microorganisms in food,
- food safety management systems,
- study of endogenous and exogenous factors on bacterial resistance formation,
- study of reactions of relevant populations of microorganisms to external and internal factors of the food environment; the quantitative determination of microbial behaviour (growth, inhibition, survivor),
- food shelf-life assessment; microbial quality and safety of traditional food products.
