Functional Food

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Functional Food is a food that has added health or even medicinal qualities. Commonly known functional foods include probiotic drinks, cereals with added vitamins and spreads with omega oils. These all provide health benefits of one kind which have keen added to the original product. Healthy eating is a growing trend. Increased awareness and knowledge is fuelling the public’s interest and demand for foods which can provide real health benefits. The ICBAN Functional Food Project aimed to´´ncrease business competitiveness in the ICBAN region by being responsive to market demand through new processes or products which have a functional food value. This initiative project aimed to enhance innovation capacity in the food sector through a four stage process of ‘Information Dissemination’, ‘Audits and Needs Analysis’, ‘People Development’ and ‘Development Plans’ over eighteen months and was facilitated by ICBAN and driven by CAFRE, Loughry Campus, the NI Centre for Food and Health (NICHE at UU Coleraine) and Food Technology Centre at St Angela’s College, Sligo. Twenty companies received audits on their products, processes and business management and a series of master classes took place. Finally, a number of companies were selected for a bursary to proceed to functional food development, either by product development or the adoption of new processes. Minister Brendan Smith announced the 4 bursaries, worth a total of £11 5,000, to pursue product development in Functional Food. Certificates were also awarded to 14 companies who attended a series of Master Classes on the development of their businesses with a particular focus on Functional Foods and new products. The successful companies were: Irwin’s Bakery, who undertook an analysis of the market to identify gaps for functional bread products. From this, the company developed two new products for market, namely a new bread roll and also wheaten bread. Waring Estate developed a cold pressed hemp oil, new to the market. Shalvey Poultry developed a range of functional cooked turkey products and finally Origin Seafood who worked on a range of pre prepared functional seafood.

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