The curtains have closed on the Consortium RITA x Amélioration Alimentaire Québec "Healthy Food Products: Strategies and Innovation" competition, and the results are in!
From McGill University, Omid Sadeghpour Marvi and Ririka Saito receive the coveted first place with their news segment-inspired video on the topic of enzymatic conversion of lactose to lactobionic acid, an added-value product sourced from whey. Their victory is a testament to their creativity and commitment to promoting healthier and more sustainable choices in the food sector.
In second place, we applaud Ashley Middleton from Université Laval for her approach to simultaneously address the challenges of seafood by-products and excess dietary sodium. Ashley Middleton's desire to advance the field of food science thanks to the stabilization of chitosan led to the well-deserved recognition.
Md Ramim Tanver Rahman, also from Université Laval, secures the third-place position with a segment on the potential benefits of peptides as functional ingredients and health-promoting compounds.
This first edition of the contest attracted submissions from the Institut de Technologie Agroalimentaire du Québec (ITAQ) in addition to McGill and Laval Universities. To all the contestants, we congratulate you on your hard work.
We thank our esteemed panel of judges whose expertise was a valuable asset throughout the evaluation process: Mélissa Weiskopf, Daniel Lacoste, Jean-François Duquesne and Marie-Noëlle Cano. The jury ensured the integrity and fairness of the competition.
This competition was made possible through the financial support of the Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ), McGill University’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and Amélioration Alimentaire Québec (AAQ).