Abstract

When designing new food products for the market-place, it is of increasing importance to understand the relationships between the structural and functional properties of food constituents and implications on their processing, nutritional, physiological and sensory behaviour. The creation of novel functionalities of ingredients in complex food systems requires knowledge of not only the structure of native agricultural materials but also the changes in their structure across a wide range of length and time scales brought about by food processing. It is the inherent complexity of modern food systems that calls for interdisciplinary scientific approaches to be applied. To explore the opportunity neutron scattering techniques offer, the Neutrons and Food conference started in 2010. The conference has been held every two years since with attendees showcasing how neutron scattering techniques have been used and, often, in concert with other complementary measurement methods including X-ray and light scattering. In 2018, the conference returns to Sydney.