We continue our series of articles on OpenLabs launched in Kazan Federal University in 2014. Today, we are publishing the overview of Foodlab based at the Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology, presented by Emilia Valeeva, its coordinator.

Forewarned is forearmed

It is currently becoming more essential to discover the peculiarities of the food quality and ecology of the region to identify their effect on people’s health in the region. The FoodLab will allow finding out how regional food traditions, the quality of food available in local supermarkets, and population’s awareness of what harmful substances food contains influence people’s health. These data will help predict the effective measures to change the current situation.

The laboratory will run researches for hygienic assessment of food quality, its chemical safety and cancerigenic risks for the health of various groups of population.

We are also going to analyze and implement special procedures to define high and higher risk groups that are subjects at wide-spread diseases like atherosclerosis, obesity, diabetes, heart diseases, depending on nutrition habits.

About the role of geography

It is worth saying that the above mentioned researches will be held separately for each district of the region. It will further help to get an integrated picture of what is going on and discover the geographical issues of problems expansion.

Interdisciplinary nutritional research is an early stage of the development of programmes to improve the quality of life and provide health promotion for Tatarstan’s population. The in-depth study of the issue will help outline priorities for the mentioned projects.

Key to success is the team

Professor Jussi Kauhanen from the Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition of the   University of Eastern Finland was invited to head the laboratory, the team of which also includes scientists from other Finnish educational institutions, representatives of Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University and the universities of Kazan.

The team members were fathers of ecological situation assessment methodology implemented on risk territories.  A number of articles have been already published by the experts ready to work in the lab. In these articles they focused on the analysis of food contamination by toxic metals, pesticides, nitrates for the risks for the population.

The project is strongly supported by the Tatarstan Division of the Federal Service on Customers' Rights Protection and Human Well-being Surveillance. It is interested in the opportunity to receive data required for the development  of preventive measures and activities to control and reduce alimentary and endocrinologic disease incidence.

Further plans of the laboratory are to educate students of Master’s programme for science of nutrition and healthy lifestyle that will be developed in cooperation with Finnish colleagues from the Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition of the University of Eastern Finland.