The food and the mood

Welcome to a one-day symposium in our series ‘Science meets Industry’. As indicated in the title, the focus will be on whether and to what extent our food can influence health, especially the mood. This is indeed a topical question: in parallel with the increasing concern about so-called lifestyle diseases and syndromes, there has been an increased interest in possible preventive dietary regimens. Today we will not focus on any regimens; we will focus on one key compound from each of our three major dietary groups, i.e. carbohydrates, protein and fat. The overall intention is to reduce the gap between basic science and the food industry.