In Work Package 5 a literature search will first be done about the potential allergenity of the proteins included in the study (report ready). Allergenic safety of protein fractions and model foods generated in WP3 will be assessed. The raw materials and model foods will be digested in a gut model. Specific antibody based techniques will be used to quantify the allergenic peptides in digesta samples.
A human intervention study with healthy volunteers will be carried out to study health effects of a limited set of different protein sources in a diet. Before deciding the protein combinations to be taken into the clinical test, an up-to-date review of the health effects of different proteins will be collected, based on total diet approach, where also other essential nutrients and bioactive compounds linked with protein sources will be taken into account (total diet approach). In the intervention study we will focus on analyzing the effects of the chosen protein sources on gut metabolism and markers for colorectal cancer as well as blood protein metabolites and markers for type 2 diabetes. We will have three different diets, in which the protein composition varies: 1) animal 70%/plant 30%; 2) animal 50%/plant 50% and 3) animal 30%/plant 70%. The participants will get part of their diet as ready foods or raw material to promote their compliance. The participants will also get personal advice for their diets. Blood and stool samples will be collected in the beginning and in the end of the 12 week intervention, as well as phenotype measures like BMI, blood pressure and body composition. The participants will also fill food diary before and in the end of the intervention.
On the basis of food diaries we will estimate the environmental, health and cost effects of changing to healthier diets, in which protein contents are decreased to the recommended level and meat protein is partly changed to plant protein. For environmental effects we will use a calculator developed in a Luke research and for health effects we try to find a suitable modelling system from recent literature.