Food as Medicine Summit: Europe

Dr Aseem Malhotra is an NHS Consultant Cardiologist, and visiting Professor of Evidence Based Medicine, Bahiana School of Medicine and Public Health, Salvador, Brazil. He is a world renowned expert in the prevention, diagnosis and management of heart disease. He is honorary council member to the Metabolic Psychiatry Clinic at Stanford University school of medicine California, and is Cardiology MSc examiner at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. He is a founding member of Action on Sugar and was the lead campaigner highlighting the harm caused by excess sugar consumption in the United Kingdom, particularly its role in type 2 diabetes and obesity.

In 2015 he helped co-ordinate the Choosing Wisely campaign by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges as lead author in a BMJ paper to highlight the risks of overuse of medical treatments. In the same year he became the youngest member to be appointed to the board of trustees of UK health think tank, The King’s Fund that advises government on health policy. Aseem is a frequent expert commentator in print and broadcast media and he has written scores of articles for a number of publications including the BMJ, British Journal of Sports Medicine, BMJ Open Heart, JAMA Internal Medicine, Prescriber, The Pharmaceutical Journal, European Scientist, The Guardian and Observer, BBC online, Huffington Post, The Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and the Washington Post. He is international guest editor of the journal of evidence-based healthcare.

Aseem has appeared in the Health Service Journal’s list of top 50 BME pioneers, and has won a number of awards for his work to raise awareness of diet-related illness both in the UK and internationally. He is a pioneer of the lifestyle medicine movement in the UK and has had feature articles written about him in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and Healthcare Leader. In 2018 he was ranked by software company Onalytica as the number 1 doctor in the world influencing obesity thinking.

In 2016 he was named in the Sunday Times Debrett’s list as one of the most influential people in science and medicine in the UK in a list that included Professor Stephen Hawking. His total Altmetric score (measure of impact and reach) of his medical journal publications since 2013 is over 10,000 making it one of the highest in the World for a clinical doctor during this period. His first book co-authored with Donal O’ Neill, The Pioppi Diet, has become an international best seller.

Ryan Carvalho earned his medical degree from Bombay University, as well as completed his pediatric residency in New York and clinical fellowship in Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition at Johns Hopkins University. Executive MBA from the Ohio State University.

Prior to his current role, Dr. Carvalho held several positions in academia, most recently as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at The Ohio State University & Attending Physician at Nationwide Childrens’ hospital.

Ryan is a member of the North American Society of Gastroenterology Hepatology and Nutrition (NASPGHAN) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). He has served on several academic boards and committees over the last 10 years. He has written more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and contributed chapters to textbooks and many educational presentations/webinars.

Tess Kelly joined Quorn Foods as a graduate researcher in 2015, bringing her
academic expertise in health psychology, behaviour change and plant-based diets to
the company. Since joining the business, Tess has held diverse roles in teams
spanning sustainability, nutrition and communications and is now Head of External
Engagement, working with company experts and thought leaders to build advocacy
and partnerships to address the challenges of achieving a sustainable food system.
Tess previously held the role of Sustainable Development Manager, leading the
company’s social impact agenda, science communications to healthcare
professionals, and its benchmarking and alignment to the Sustainable Development
Goals as part of Quorn Foods’ 2030 Net Positive ambition. Tess is currently studying
towards a second Master’s degree in Global Food Security and Nutrition at the
University of Edinburgh.

Bernhard Kowatsch is Head of the Innovation Accelerator at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). The WFP Innovation Accelerator identifies, nurtures and scales disruptive startups and entrepreneurs that accelerate progress towards zero hunger. Innovations include blockchain, agri-tech, global connectivity and Artificial Intelligence. http://innovation.wfp.org/innovation-accelerator
Previously, Bernhard co-founded the ShareTheMeal app, built up WFP’s Business Innovation team and worked as Project Leader at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for global tech and industrial goods companies.
Bernhard holds 3 master degrees (CEMS Master in International Management atHEC Paris, Master of International Business Administration at Vienna University of Business, Master of Business Administration at Vienna University of Business)
The WFP Innovation Accelerator received the award by FastCompany as Top 10 Most Innovative companies 2017 – Food category

Julie Willems is the Global Nutrition Director for Foods and Standards at Unilever. As a passionate believer in tasty products that help people and planet to improve health and wellbeing, her current responsibilities include supporting the sustainable growth of Unilever’s Foods brands and ensuring that Unilever’s nutrition standards are aligned to the latest scientific developments and dietary recommendations. Over the past 10 years Julie has worked across a variety of Unilever’s categories designing and launching products. Julie obtained her BSc in Nursing from St. Louis University and her MSc in Health Science with a specialization in Public Health from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Lucy Jones is the VP Clinical at Oviva, a company transforming the way people access care through their technology. By background, she is an experienced dietitian, having worked in numerous London hospitals and specialises in  managing obesity and metabolic syndrome.

She is well known for her television presenting roles including Channel 4’s The Food Hospital, ITV’s The Alan Titchmarsh Show, BBC1’s Eat Well for Less and Channel 4’s Sugar Rush with Jamie Oliver. As a media spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, she regularly appeared on television, radio and written press providing expert comment on nutrition news stories including Sky News,  the BBC (Breakfast, News 24, Watchdog, Rip off Britain) ITV (Loose Women and Kyle’s Files) Channel 4 (Food Inspectors and Super Shoppers), Channel 5 (‘When Gastric Bands go wrong’ and ‘The shocking Truth about Food’) and many others. In 2013, she was named BDA’s media  spokesperson of the Year and Nutrition and Health’s Nutrition writer and Broadcaster of  the year.

After his study of Human Nutrition at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, Nard Clabbers worked for the food industry for more than a decade as the liason between marketing and science for many different brands and products ranging from infant milk formula to muesli bars.

In 2011 Nard joined Dutch research organisation TNO to lead their nutrition and health team. Also at TNO, he then set up the world’s largest public-private research consortium on personalised nutrition and health. His current position is Chief Science Officer for the startup company Happ. Happ helps consumers choose and buy the best foods based on their personal profile.

In his spare time, Nard rides mountainbike marathons as fast as he can for the Dutch SforZ Mountainbike Racing Team.

Rodney Jones is Principal Investigator of the Health Claims Unpacked project (funded by EIT Food) and Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Reading. His past research on food labelling and health communication has been funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and the Hong Kong Healthcare and Promotion Fund. He has published on the subject of health communication in such journals as Health, Risk and Society, The Journal of Business and Technical Communication, and Multimodal Communication, and is the author of the book Health and Risk Communication: An Applied Linguistic Perspective (Routledge).

Karin van het Hof is Senior Director Health & Nutrition Sciences at PepsiCo, guiding the strategic
plans for the global Beverages category and leading the substantiation of functional benefits for
PepsiCo’s innovation pipeline. In addition, she drives the transformation of the beverage portfolio in
line with the company ambition of “Winning with Purpose”.
Karin has an MSc and PhD in nutrition science, she is visiting associate professor at the Division of
Human Nutrition & Health of the Wageningen University in the Netherlands and president of the
Dutch Nutrition Society. Prior to her current role at PepsiCo, Karin has held various positions at
Unilever and at Nutrileads, a health ingredients company.

Sue Klapholz is Vice President of Nutrition, Health and Food Safety at Impossible Foods Inc. She received her M.D. from The University of Illinois College of Medicine and her Ph.D. in Genetics from The University of Chicago. Her postgraduate education included residency training at The University of California at San Francisco and postdoctoral fellowships at The University of Chicago and Stanford University. Sue has worked as a scientist, an editor and an educator, and currently serves on the board of directors of Lyrical Foods and the Palo Alto Humane Society.

David M. Eisenberg, MD, is the director of culinary nutrition and adjunct associate professor of nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the founding Co-Director of the Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives conference, and founding Executive Director of the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative, a group of 30+ organizations with teaching kitchens, all of which seek to establish and evaluate best practices relating to nutrition, culinary and lifestyle education.

From 2000-2010, Dr. Eisenberg served as the Bernard Osher Distinguished Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, founding director of the Osher Research Center and the founding chief of the Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies at Harvard Medical School. He simultaneously served as the director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital.

David is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He completed his fellowship training in general internal medicine and primary care and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine. In 1979, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, David served as the first U.S. medical exchange student to the People’s Republic of China. In 1993, he was the medical advisor to the PBS Series, Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers.

He has served as an advisor to the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federation of State Medical Boards with regard to complementary, alternative and integrative medicine research, education and policy. From 2003-2005 David served on a National Academy of Sciences Committee responsible for the Institute of Medicine Report entitled, ―The Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine by the American Public. More recently, David served as a member of the US National Board of Medical Examiners Clinical Skills Committee and its Communications Task Force.

David has authored numerous scientific and educational articles involving complementary, integrative and lifestyle medicine and continues to pursue research, educational and clinical programs relating to integrative and lifestyle medicine. As the son and grandson of professional bakers, David aspires to bring together the culinary and medical communities to enhance comprehensive health care for all.

Taylor Newman, PhD, RDN, LD strives towards a world where everyone has access to adequate,
nutritious foods. Taylor’s doctoral research at the University of Georgia focused on produce prescription
programs across the U.S. She now helps people nationwide live healthier lives as a Nutrition Program
Development Manager with the Kroger Co., where she serves as a subject matter expert for Kroger’s
Food as Medicine strategy.

With a PhD in Public health and over 100 published articles on diet and health, Linia has a
strong grounding in nutrition science. Her passion is translating science into easy to digest
and practical advice. She is a British Dietetic Association Spokesperson and is regularly seen
appearing on national TV and being quoted in the press. Having also worked extensively in
high performance sport, Linia is all about helping people thrive from the inside out. She is
particularly passionate about women’s health and spends her clinical time working with
women (athletes, non-athletes, and everything in between) helping them to better
understand the powerful connection between how their body works and how to be the best
version of themselves. Outside of work she enjoys travelling, being active and socialising
over good (& nutritious) food!

Suzan Wopereis, principal scientist, joined TNO in 2006 and works with a systems biology research group active on the theme ‘quantification of health and effects of lifestyle on health’. Suzan is also board member of Lifestyle4Health and coordinates the program line ‘bio-mechanisms’ together with Prof. Hanno Pijl.

Within TNO, Suzan is acting as principal investigator in several public private partnerships focusing on systems health applying genomics technology, bioinformatics, and standardized infrastructures. She was involved in several EU projects focusing on systems health and is responsible for scientific contents in the TNO program on personalized health focusing on inflammatory resilience. At TNO, Suzan’s main focus has been on phenotypic flexibility as a measure of health, where she uses standardized challenge tests to study the response of a multitude of biological processes to quantify resilience in health optimization and chronic lifestyle related diseases such as Diabetes Mellitus type II. Furthermore, Suzan coordinated the evidence-based scientific advice system that has been implemented by the American personalized nutrition start-up company ‘Habit’ (https://habit.com/). Suzan is internationally recognized as an expert in the area of personalized metabolic health.

After 11 years of working as a consultant at Deloitte, Robert Jan in the past eight years has been assisting in various roles the Executive Board of Jumbo Supermarkets to create Jumbo’s new growths trajectory.  Since 2014 Health was identified as one of the disruptive growth scenario’s, various explorations on the topic have been conducted, leading to the implementation of the Jumbo Foodcoach Program for customers and Pro athletes of PSV, Team Jumbo Visma and TeamNL.

Sowrya is a Registered dietitian with 15 years of experience, in the field of Heath & nutrition.

Working with patients on their journey to recover from various chronic illness’s by crafting therapeutic diets & RT feeds in hospitals To building effective nutrition strategies based on benefit led science for a healthier & balanced processed foods portfolio in the food industry has been an insightful journey for her that can only validate the belief that the right diet and lifestyle are paramount to health and longevity. 

She believes in the natural, healing power of food. Practicing food as medicine has been part of her culture that’s deep rooted in the science of Ayurveda and holistic nutrition.   

Having lived and worked in multiple countries across EU and Asia, she finds the need to revolutionize how we eat crucial, that can be achieved with a large impact only when multiple organizations across the spectrum (policy makers, industry, academia) collaborate and work towards a common goal. 

She has a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Master’s in Clinical Dietetics from Pune university with a Diploma in Marketing and PR from Symbiosis university Pune, 

She lives in the Netherlands and in her spare time teaches underprivileged children on health and hygiene.

Sandy is founder of Superfied, a self-care platform providing personalised food recommendations using wisdom, science and smart algorithms for best physical and mental health. Before Superfied, Sandy was co-founder and CEO of award-winning marketing agency, Octopus Group (now part of Saatchi & Saatchi). On the other side of life, he’s is a fan of spirituality – and Leeds United.

Dr Jo Hale is Senior Research Associate in sustainability at the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change. She leads behavioural science input to the CUSSH project (Complex Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health), a multinational collaboration at the forefront of improving environmental sustainability and health in cities. Jo’s research focuses on combining systems thinking with behaviour change frameworks, including projects on urban climate policy, active travel, green spaces, decarbonisation of homes, waste management and fashion consumption. In the policy sphere, Jo has conducted sustainability research for clients including Defra, BEIS and Welsh Government, and was awarded a net zero research fellowship with think tank Policy Connect.

Fred Bergmans, co-founder of Carezzo Nutrition, an innovator in protein enriched food & drinks for cure & care.

Fred is marketing director of the start-up Carezzo Nutrition which introduced a new concept of enriched food and drinks to beat malnutrition. The Carezzo concept has been developed in the Cater with Care project in close cooperation with Wageningen University and the leading food Hospital Gelderse Vallei. In 2012-2015 scientific research, product development, test in various target groups and human interventions studies resulted in evidence based significant improvement of protein intake. Hospitals have been the first to adopt the concept as it also takes hold in residential and homecare. The company introduced the concept in 2015 in the Dutch market and won the Accenture Innovation Award 2015 for Fair Food. The concept is implemented by three quarter of Dutch hospitals within 5 years.

Fred is former Corporate Marketing Director and head of product development centre of Perfetti-Van Melle, well-known for its global brand Mentos in confectionery. With over 30 years of experience in international marketing and product innovation in FMCG Food (Nutricia, Heineken, Mars, Peijnenburg, Mondelez) Fred has built a track record in integrating market and techno perspectives for successful new product development and market introduction.

Elsie is a just graduated medical doctor and former professional field hockey player. During her education, Elsie realized she is much interested in lifestyle medicine and unlocking human’s potential by making lifestyle adjustments. Whether performing on a pitch, at work or home, her experiences as an athlete taught her that these factors are decisive in performing optimally

As she is passionate about nutrition, Elsie founded Nix it Up, an Instagram page where she creates fresh and delicious recipes, inspired by her own kitchen garden. Elsie competed on the highest national level of field hockey in the Netherlands and for the Dutch national team. Her highlights being a golden medal during the Youth Olympic Games and the World Championship under 21, besides many other (inter)national league titles.

Rick has established expertise in dietetics and performance nutrition from his 15 year clinical career in hospitals and working with professional teams and athletes up to Olympic level. Rick is experienced within FMCG, FSMP and supplementation sectors, supporting NPD, regulatory affairs and scientific communication to multiple global brands.