Speaker Biographies
Speakers
Professor Judith Buttriss
Director General, British Nutrition Foundation
Professor Judith Buttriss became Director General of the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) in October 2007, having been BNF’s Science Director for almost 10 years. She is a Visiting Professor at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, and Kings College London, a Registered Public Health Nutritionist and a Fellow of the Association for Nutrition. She is currently a member of the Government Office for Science’s Food Research Partnership, Defra’s Family Food committee, and has contributed recently to the work of a DH committee considering fruit and vegetables and a DH Expert Group that considered calorie reduction. She has over 25 years of experience in providing targeted advice on nutrition and applying science to develop nutrition policy, and has written a number of reviews, articles and book chapters on a wide range of diet and health topics, including topics as diverse as health claims, child nutrition, healthy ageing, and sustainable diets.
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Prof. H David McCarthy
Institute of Health and Policy Research, London Metropolitan University
David is Professor of Nutrition & Health at London Metropolitan University. He has conducted research into obesity for the last 28 years and is particularly interested in body composition measurement and visceral fat accumulation, with a focus upon children and youths. His interests extend to the influence of ethnicity and socio-economic status on body fatness. He has produced body fat charts, waist circumference charts and skeletal muscle charts for clinical use in children, which are used widely across the UK and overseas. He runs a teenage weight management programme commissioned by the local PCT as well as a worksite-based weight management service for staff at the university. He holds a BSc in Nutrition and a PhD in Biochemistry. He developed the BSc and MSc courses in Human Nutrition and the new MSc in Obesity & Weight Management at London Metropolitan University. David regularly appears in the media on nutrition and obesity-related issues and provided the on screen expert advice in two series of the Sky 1 programme ‘Fat Families’.
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Robert Griffiths
Reading Scientific Services Ltd
Robert graduated with a PhD in lipid biochemistry and has since worked at RSSL for the last 11 years. He is the oils & fats Technical Specialist in the Investigative Analysis department at RSSL and has held several roles at RSSL including the management of the Nutritional, Flavour & Taints and Lipids laboratories at various times. He has been involved in the development of analytical methods to determine lipid functional ingredients and also provided technical support for product development of functional foods.
Jane Staniforth
Reading Scientific Services Ltd
Jane is a Food Technology graduate who has held a number of product development roles with Tate & Lyle and LinTech before joining RSSL in 2000. As part of her experience, she has been undertaking development projects on a contract basis for the food industry in a broad range of products categories. Many projects have involved the addition of functional ingredients into the formulations which has posed many challenges. Jane is now Food Business Development Manager for RSSL.
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Dr Robert Child
S
enior Regulatory Affairs Consultant, Sport Legal Ltd
Dr Child has a PhD in physiology and biochemistry and worked on government funded post-doctoral research at the Department of Medicine at Liverpool University on free radicals and cell signalling. From 2002 Dr Child has been involved in all aspects of commercial food law, both nationally and internationally in areas such as medicines classifications, commercial communications (health claims) and food safety. He has overturned Final Determinations by the UK Medicines Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) and Irish Medicines Board (IMB) and successfully defended clients’ product marketing claims against challenges by the ASA and Trading Standards. Dr Child’s expertise has been utilised by some of the biggest sports nutrition and raw ingredient firms in Europe and has provided scientific position statements to European Specialist Sports Nutrition Alliance (ESSNA). This allowed the legal sale of sports nutrition products under the PARNUTS framework throughout Europe.
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Dr Roberta Re
Nutrition Research Manager, Leatherhead Food Research
Roberta graduated in 1995 from the University of Palermo Italy, where she completed a Doctorate in Pharmacy, after which she spent a year at the University of California Berkeley before commencing a PhD in Biochemistry at King's College London at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases. In 2001 she joined the MRC-HNR as a Survey co-ordinator of the National Diet and Nutrition Survey. Having spent several years in a research environment, her interest has focused on the investigation of functional foods and their relationship to a number of health related issues. Prior to joining Leatherhead in 2007, Roberta spent several years working as a Business Manager for a biotech company associated with the University of Cambridge where she gained business and marketing experience. She is now the manager of the Nutrition Research department which performs human intervention studies for efficacy and health claim substantiation, in the areas of satiety, glycaemic response and weight management as well as routine GI testing.
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Helen Munday
Coca-Cola
Helen Munday is Director Scientific and Regulatory Affairs for Coca-Cola North West Europe and Nordics. She leads a team to ensure the legal compliance of the diverse product portfolio and works with key stakeholders to drive opportunities for future business. Helen works closely with Research and Development, Marketing and others at Coca-Cola to drive business innovations. Before joining Coca-Cola, Helen was Director of Food Safety and Science at the UK’s Food and Drink Federation (FDF) and prior to that worked for Mars for 20 years in the UK and US, as a nutritional researcher and as a product developer. Helen is a registered nutritionist and a Fellow of the Institute of Food Science and Technology.
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Dr Karen Reid
Performance Foods
Dr Karen Reid has over 20 years experience working as a Registered Dietitian and Sports and Exercise Nutritionist at an elite level in sport. She is a member of the British Dietetic Association (BDA), and a Committee member of the Sports Dietitians UK professional interest group. She has actively contributed to the development of the UK Sport & Exercise Nutrition Register (SENr) - an initiative funded by UK Sport to ensure quality assurance of Sports Nutritionists practising in the UK and is both an assessor for the register and a member of the Registration Committee.
Karen has provided performance nutrition support to both groups and individuals, across a wide range of sports including, UK Athletics, Welsh Rugby Union, Elite Cymru athletes, England Women's Rugby Football Union, England Hockey Association and was the Regional Lead Nutritionist for the EIS in London for 4 years.
In 2003 Karen launched her company Performance Food Ltd and developed the innovative company website www.performancefood.co.uk. The website features lots of practical information for athletes and sports people such as how to incorporate fast foods and restaurant meals into a sports diet, and a collection of high quality booklets and fact sheets on a range of sports nutrition topics.
Karen is a visiting lecturer to students undertaking courses in sports science and sports medicine and has been a tutor to postgraduate courses for Sports Dietitians since 1992. She has written articles in a number of sports related publications, presented her work at conferences and published research.