Dr Maria Charalambides on what makes food research exciting

Dr Maria Charalambides explaining food research to children at the 2017 Imperial Festival

Dr Charalambides is co-lead of the food engineering theme in Imperial's new Nutrition and Food Network.

Many researchers across faculties and departments at Imperial College London work on food-related topics, applying expertise from areas as diverse as medicine, chemistry or economics. The College's Nutrition and Food Network aims to bring them together, and to start new projects and collaborations with a multi-disciplinary approach. One of the network's research themes focuses on intelligent food design and engineering, where Mechanical Engineering staff play an important role- amongst them, Dr Maria Charalambides, who leads the Soft Solids research group:

What is the main goal of your food research?

"When I first started working on food research, it was about helping with food processing. The food industry has a lot of know-how on processing tricky materials, but it often relies on the experience of skilled workers, and there is a lack of scientific knowledge of the effects of processes on a product and its mechanical properties. This kind of work has been done in the polymer processing industries and metal forming, but the food industries are younger, so there is a lot that we can apply from basic engineering principles.

The more recent work that I’ve been involved with is on what happens to food mechanically inside the body. Instead of industrial processing, we're looking at human processing, in the mouth, as well as further down the gastrointestinal tract. We're collaborating on this research with the Department of Medicine, but also externally with other universities, Oxford, Nottingham, Leeds as well as industrial partners, through a BBSRC-funded project.

We also have an internal team here in Mechanical Engineering: myself, Professor Yannis Hardalupas in the Thermofluids division and Dr Philippa Cann and Dr Marc Masen in the Tribology group. The research links mechanics of materials science with thermofluids, heat transfer and lubrication to tackle things like oral processing. We're really excited about having a chance to solve this really difficult problem, there has been a lot of progress in the field, but there’s still a lot that nobody has done before."

What is the benefit of this work to the consumer?

"The benefit will be huge. The food industry is under a lot of pressure to reduce sugar content, which is not easy to do, because sugar has a structuring effect. We can examine experimentally and theoretically the effects of various formulations, to change the structure of a material so that it has less sugar, but the consumer is not able to tell. It is a known fact in engineering that the way a composite material is put together will affect how it deforms, how it breaks, how it wraps around surfaces, how it reacts to heat transfer and so on. For the first time, we can apply engineering principles to design food so that it behaves the way the consumer would like it to behave, but at the same time, make it better for them. Working together with industry, we can come up with tools to revolutionise product design, and therefore solve the problem of diet-related health issues."

Why did you choose this research area?

"In 1992, just after finishing my PhD, I did a post-doc on how aging affected the mechanical properties of cheese, and I really enjoyed it, it was something new at that time. Four years later, a lectureship was advertised in the department, and they were looking for somebody to work within the mechanics of materials, but also to bring food engineering research to the department, so I jumped at the chance, and this is where I am today. I still do traditional engineering work on synthetic polymers, paints, matrixes for composites, etc, but a huge part of my work is on food engineering. Looking back to where I started, I was the only one, but now there are more and more people interested in it."

What do you think makes this research area fun or interesting?

"People relate to it, perhaps more than to other types of engineering. Eating is something personal, and such a vital part of our life. I think it’s nice to show that mechanical engineering is also about these new fields of research, because as engineers we have the tools that we can apply to this new set of materials. It’s something exciting for mechanical engineering to get into, there are a lot of challenges with it, a natural polymer has a much more complex behaviour than synthetic materials. It makes the research very worthwhile."

Do you think food engineering will play a more important part in the industry in the future?

"I think so, because the food industry is the largest manufacturing industry in the UK, and it has a huge impact on the UK economy. There is a lot of interest in personalised nutrition, and in reducing the energy content of various snacks to make them healthier for the consumer. Engineering and science can help the industry overcome these hurdles. They’ve traditionally worked with food scientists, but now they see the benefit of working with engineers outside food science."

Has your research changed the way you view food?

"I hope it has! I go into many meetings nowadays with researchers from the department of Medicine, and they discuss the benefits of a good diet, and the effects of diet on human health. When you hear a specialist talking about it, it leaves a bigger impression. So I think I buy less sugar in the house! Another good thing about working in this field is that you actually get to see the food being made. It’s really exciting to see a huge process line, how it starts making anything, from crisps to cheese, to chocolate or snacks, from the ingredients, down to making the products and then the packaging. It’s all engineering, basically!"