Biochemistry of Food, Nutrition, and Metabolic Diseases

The course provides biochemical knowledge suitable for understanding the nutritional properties of food, with a particular focus on the starting materials and on food processing, acquiring a biochemical view of food allergy and intolerance. Moreover, a modern vision of nutritional biochemistry will be presented by addressing the following topics: modulation of metabolism; control and modulation of enzymes; fundamentals of signal transduction; modulation of gene expression at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels; enzymatic defects and related pathologies. On this basis, the biochemical aspects of specific nutritional and bioactive compounds, their direct anabolic/catabolic functions, and their role in activation of specific metabolic pathway will be discussed. Furthermore, will be studied the biochemical aspects related with the main metabolic diseases that may induce the development of chronic diseases.

At the end of the course, the student will be able to understand the role of food components in modulating biochemical process and metabolic events within cells; familiarize with the biochemical aspects of food preparation and on their relationships to consumers' wellness; ability to evaluate of the various types of information provided by the methodological approaches used in this field.