Prof. Fogliano is a food scientist. After 20 years of career at  the University of Naples as professor in Biochemistry, Food Chemistry and Functional Foods, from 2013 he  became chair of the Food Quality & Design group at Wageningen University. He is the author of more than 270 publications on indexed journals covering many aspects of Food science. These papers received more than 11.000 citations and I have an h index of 60. He is one of the only Dutch food scientists listed in the Thomson Reuter list of the “Highly Cited” www.highlycited.com
The focus of his research is on the design of innovative healthy foods adopting a chain perspective from the selection of raw materials, through processing and formulation up to the physiological functionality
and consumer behavior. He is well known at international level for the studies on the modification induced by food cooking and in particular for the compounds formed through Maillard Reaction

Titel presentatie: Fire, cooked foods and human evolution: from the diet of the past a cue to tackle obesity pandemic.

Samenvatting

For millions of years hunter-gatherers tasted plants and their fruits to decide what was edible. After fire domestication better foods become available and humans evolved an innate preference for cooked energy-dense foods. Cooking odorants became potent signals of attraction to our ancestors and we still experience the same sensation when inhaling the smells of foods being prepared in the kitchen flavour (particularly the kitchen of our parents) or when passing a bakery shop. Unfortunately this heritage is also partially responsible for the obesity pandemic we are facing now as the availability of energetic processed foods is one of the main factors underlying this phenomenon.