Bakery Products and Cereals: Are They Worth Their Salt?

Papendrecht / NL. (aacc) Many professionals in the field of bakery and cereal products R+D are very well aware of the negative health aspects of salt in our diet and of the urgency to decrease the salt level. It is also known to you that bread and cereal based products contribute substantially to our daily salt consumption. Reduction of salt in bread and bakery products is therefore urgently required. Nevertheless only a few countries in Europe are actively reducing the salt content in bread.

On the other hand salt has an important beneficial technological function – next to taste – in the processing of bread dough and cereals in general. It is not surprising therefore that in the cereal processing and bakery sector there are objections in reducing the salt content. Exemplary are the protests of the German baking industry conveyed in the European Parliament recently.

As the topic of salt reduction is a matter of large debate in the cereal processing and baking industry, a symposium specifically devoted to this sector is desperately needed to inform the academic and industrial R+D professionals and to structure the debate.

Therefore Cereals+Europe, the European section of AACC International and the largest organisation of R+D professionals in the cereal based product area in Europe, is planning a two day symposium on this topic on 22nd to 23rd March 2010, in the Netherlands entitled «Bakery Products and Cereals: Are They Worth Their Salt?». The full preliminary program:

Salt: Health aspects and reduction programs

Keynote on Health aspects: Marianne Geleijnse, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Keynote on Retail perspective: to be confirmed.
Keynote on situation Bakery Chain UK: Stanley Cauvain, BakeTran, UK.
Keynote on salt uses from an industrial perspective: Wouter Lox, EUsalt, Brussels. Balancing the salt reduction and nutrient reduction policy in setting health policy.

Salt reduction in bakery and cereal products: technological and sensory aspects

Reduction of sodium chloride in wheat dough and bread – effects on rheological, baking and sensorial properties. Margit Beck, Stefan Tietze, Andreas Houben and Thomas Becker, TU München, Germany.
Saltiness enhancement in bread without additives. Martijn Noort, Markus Stieger, Rob Hamer, TI Food + Nutrition, Wageningen, TNO Quality of Life, Zeist, Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Dr. Frank Meijer, DSM, Delft, The Netherlands.
Approaches to measure sodium binding in wheat dough and bread. Peter Koehler, Tabea Wieber, Katharina Konitzer, Thomas Hofmann, TU Munich, Germany.
Kari Tronsmo; CSM Bakery Supplies Europe, Bingen, Germany.
Cross modal interaction as a solution to salt reduction. Peter Weegels, Sonneveld Group.
The impact of salt on the quality and safety of bread. Elke Arendt, University College, Cork, Ireland.
Jan Delcour, Catholic University Leuven, Belgium.

Info: The registration is now open. Interested persons have to download the file REGISTRATION+FORM+2010.doc from the C+E server. For more details please read the downloaded file.