Last chance to submit your abstract for poster presentation now!

Introduction

Food materials are unusual as soft matter. They are highly complex, operating on multiple length scales and phases and structured via multiple externally applied fields.

A growing number of scientists are applying a soft matter physics approach to food science. This Faraday Discussion on Soft Matter Approaches to Structured Food will introduce and strengthen the concept of the soft matter approach to food scientists, and bring food scientists together with non-food experts (both experimental and theoretical) from the field of soft matter physics. The Discussion will allow for the exchange of views on state-of-the-art approaches like soft-glass rheology, multiscale/mesoscale simulation techniques, theories on slow dynamics, and driven soft matter systems.

The Discussion will be held in the city of Wageningen in the Netherlands - one of the prime centres for food science in Europe. The Scientific Committee warmly invites you to take part in the Discussion and looks forward to welcoming you in Wageningen.

Aims

The aim of this Discussion is to provide a platform for the exchange of views, to encourage regular food scientists (such as process engineers and food chemists) to adopt the soft matter approach, and to encourage non-food experts from the soft matter community to include food materials in their research. Junior researchers and PhD students in food science will have the opportunity to get more experience of novel soft matter approaches by discussion with top experts in the field. They will also benefit from being able to showcase their own research via a poster session.

Themes 

• Structuring formation via external fields (shear, intensive heating, electric)
  
• Structuring formation via self-assembly (adsorption at interfaces/organogels) 
  
• Slow dynamics in stabilized/jammed foods 
  
• Simulation of structured soft matter/foods at multiple length scales              

Scientific Committee

Dr Ruud van der Sman, (Wageningen University, The Netherlands) (Chair)
Professor Martien Cohen-Stuart (Wageningen University, The Netherlands)
Dr Ramille Ettelaie (University of Leeds)
Professor Sandra Hill (University of Nottingham)
Professor Peter Fryer (University of Birmingham)
Dr Bill Frith (Unilever Colworth)