Oman Hold A Food and Nutrition in Health and Disease Workshop

The Food Science and Nutrition Department of the College of Agricultural & Marine Sciences at Sultan Qaboos University organized a workshop on ‘Food and Nutrition in Health and Disease’.

The workshop discussed topics including Food and health; and nutrition and neurological and metabolic disorders in Oman.

In addition to researchers from different colleges at SQU, three international speakers presented papers in the workshop. In his paper, Dr G. J. Guillemin from the Dept of Pharmacology at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said mammalian longevity could be potentially increased by two mechanisms, namely, caloric restriction and ingestion of natural neuroprotective compounds.

Dr Samir Al Adawi, Associate Professor in the Department of Behavioural Medicine at SQU said that rising tide of obesity among population is a real challenge for the Sultanate. He said that three per cent to nine per cent of pre-school children, 12 to 25 per cent of school children, 15 per cent to 45 per cent of adolescents and 30 per cent to 75 per cent of adult male are obese in Oman.

Dr Samir highlighted some of emerging psychosocial issues relevant for understanding and coming to grip with this emerging public health problem.

According to findings, walnut diets (six per cent and nine per cent) improved spatial learning and memory.

The walnut diet also improved motor coordination reduced anxiety in elevated plus maze. These findings suggest that dietary supplementation of walnut improves behavioural abnormalities in Alzheimer’s disease mouse model, Dr Essa said.

Dr Karin Petrini from the Department of Psychology at the University of Glasgow gave a presentation on the link between dietary patterns and risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Presenting a paper titled Omega 3 DHA in Pregnancy and Neurocognitive Development, Prof Mary Harris from the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, at Colorado State University in USA said that DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) is key to the developing brain, accumulating in vast amounts during infant development and during the first years of your baby’s life.

Share/Save