Evan Fraser, PhD
Director, Arrell Food Institute
Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, College of Social and Applied Human Sciences
University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada
Talk Title: “The Future of Protein: Pandemics, the Digital Revolution, and Beyond”
Keynote Speaker
The global SARS COVID 2 pandemic has exposed both the strengths and weaknesses in our food systems and these will affect how we feed agricultural animals, pets, and ourselves in the coming years. Dr. Evan Fraser will discuss the societal implications of changing national and global food systems and how a pandemic has accelerated innovation for a more sustainable and health-focused approach.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Fraser, Director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph, started thinking about agriculture and food systems while spending summers working on his grandfather’s fruit farm in Niagara. Today, he holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security, is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society, and a professor of geography at the University of Guelph. Fraser did degrees in forestry, anthropology and agriculture at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto. He began his academic career in 2003, at the University of Leeds, where he worked on farming and climate change. He is the author of approximately 70 scientific papers or book chapters, and has written for The Guardian, CNN, The Walrus and Ottawa Citizen. Fraser also authored Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations(2010), which was shortlisted for the James Beard Food Literature Award.
Mary-Beth Hall, PhD
Research Animal Scientist
USDA-ARS, Madison, WI, USA
Talk Title: “Uses, Abuses, Artifacts, and Just Wrong: Working Properly With Feed Analyses”
Keynote Speaker
Whether formulating diets, making claims on feed composition, or in our research, nutrition work relies on analyses of foods and feeds. One of the challenges we face is deciding whether analytical values we receive are right. Values can be wrong, and it can affect the validity and legality of what we do. For our clients, it can affect the healthfulness of diets we recommend. And does an assay measure what we think it does in different feeds? (Not always.) In this session we will cover the ins and outs of sleuthing feed analysis values, understanding their variability and what they actually measure, and focus on how to apply them soundly.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Hall is a research scientist working in dairy cattle nutrition for the USDA-Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, WI, USA. Her degrees in Animal Science are from Cornell University and Virginia Tech. Dr. Hall’s research focuses on the non-fiber carbohydrates in dairy cattle diets: their chemical analysis for diet formulation, as well as their digestion and use by dairy cattle and rumen microbes. She currently serves on the U.S. National Research Council committee that is revising the Nutrient Requirements of Dairy Cattle. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband and a varied pack of rescued dogs.
Benjamin Bohrer, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Food Science, Ontario Agricultural College
University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada
Talk Title: “A Global Outlook of Protein Food Consumption”
Keynote Speaker
Animal derived food products are nutritionally dense in dietary protein, vitamins, and minerals. Consumption of these nutrients, especially indispensable amino acids, is important in the human diet for proper growth/development and to help the body repair/regenerate cells. In developed regions of the world, there has been a lost appreciation for the nutritional value of animal derived food products like meat, milk, and eggs. Statistically, this lost appreciation has led to an increase in the population of people who choose to consume plant-based foods as their primary source of protein. This presentation will focus on nutritional density and nutritional value of protein foods, while also providing an outlook on protein food consumption for the future.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Boher is an assistant professor of meat science at the University of Guelph in the Department of Food Science. He began his appointment at the University of Guelph in 2016 following the completion of his graduate education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ben’s research focuses on several aspects of the meat science and technology spectrum including live animal growth and development, fresh meat evaluation and fabrication, manufacture and evaluation of further processed meat products, nutrient density and nutritional quality of protein foods, and evaluation of non-meat protein foods.
Thomas Wolever, DM, PhD
Professor Emeritus
Department of Nutritional Sciences
Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Talk Title: “Glycemic Index, Glycemic Load, Glycemic Response – the Relevance for Obesity and Co-Morbidities“
Keynote Speaker
What are the best types of dietary carbohydrate for preventing or treating obesity and its major co-morbidity, type 2 diabetes (T2D)? A major current focus is the WHO recommendation to reduce the intake of added sugars from all foods to <10% energy (50g/day); however, this could be harmful since not all foods containing added sugars are equal. Glycemic index (GI) is a measure of the extent to which carbohydrate foods to raise blood glucose. In Canada, foods can be advertised as having a low glycemic response (GR), but does not allow low-GI claims. I will review the evidence for the role of GI and glycemic load (GL) in the prevention and treatment of obesity and diabetes, discuss the difference between GR, GL and GI and debunk common criticisms of GI.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Wolever obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from Oxford University, UK in 1980, a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Toronto in 1986 and a Doctorate in Medicine from Oxford University in 1993. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Toronto with cross appointments as Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto and Member of Active Medical Staff, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto.
Dr. Wolever’s research interests are on the effects of dietary carbohydrates on human physiology and metabolism. He is most well known for work on the glycaemic index developed with Dr. David Jenkins and other collaborators. Dr. Wolever has written or co-authored over 340 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and also authored a book entitled: The Glycaemic Index: A Physiological Classification of Dietary Carbohydrate published in 2006 by CABI (www.cabi.org). In 1997 Dr. Wolever founded GI Testing, Inc. to provide confidential GI testing services to industry. To cope with the high demand for GI testing and to enable a wider range of clinical research services to be provided, Glycemic Index Laboratories, Inc. was formed in 2004 and renamed INQUIS Clinical Research Ltd., in 2019 (www.inquis.com); a corporation of which he is President and Medical Director. Dr. Wolever is most proud of his marriage and 3 children aged 31, 29 and 22 years and enjoys orienteering, cycling and recorder playing.
Angelo Tremblay, PhD
Professor
Department of Kinesiology
Laval University, QC, Canada
Talk Title: “Tackling Obesity – A Sustainable Future”
Keynote Speaker
Inactive animals fed a palatable high-fat/high energy dense diet are at high risk to accumulate excess body fat. Dogs benefit from walking/jogging and can help their master to adhere to an active lifestyle. However, chemical pollutants are still detected in animal food and may favor body fat gain. With this in mind, targeting the gut microbiota with pre- and/or probiotic supplementation may improve brain function and promote body detoxification.
Speaker Bio
Professor Angelo Tremblay obtained his PhD in Physiology in Laval University, Quebec City, and is currently a professor in the Department of Kinesiology in this university. His investigations are mostly oriented towards the study of factors influencing energy balance in humans with the intent to improve obesity management. Recently, his research has been focused on the study of non-traditional determinants of obesity such as short sleep duration, low calcium/dairy intake, insufficient vitamin intake, suboptimal feeding behaviors, demanding cognitive effort and persistent organic pollutants. He is holder of the Canada Research Chair in Environment and Energy Balance.
Jennifer Radosevich, PhD
Worldwide Director of Research
Hill’s Pet Nutrition
Talk Title: “Driving microbiome nutritional technologies into new spaces: implications for pet health apart from the gut”
Sponsor Talk
We are beginning to understand how nutrition can influence a pet’s microbiome to impact pet health. Interestingly, the nutrition provided for the gut microbiome affects more than just gut health. This presentation will show that nutritional technologies which work through the gut microbiome can also improve biological markers of both kidney and brain health.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Jennifer Radosevich is Worldwide Director of Research at Hill’s Pet Nutrition where she is responsible for leading the early research team to develop and accelerate new technologies for Hill’s products. She oversees the Nutrition Innovation, Bioinformatics and Research Laboratories teams to further research platforms including nutrigenetics, nutrigenomics, metabolomics, and microbiomics. She completed her PhD in Biochemistry/ Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology at Iowa State University. She has over 25 years industry experience leveraging innovation to further business goals in the agribusiness, human and pet food markets.