Innovation Profile: University of Toronto Nutritional Sciences and Loblaws Companies

For over 20 years, Dr David Jenkins, Nutritional Scientist at the University of Toronto (U of T), and Canada's largest food distributor, Loblaws Companies, have worked together to create appealing product lines with healthy food ingredients. Read full profile below.

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Dr David Jenkins Professor, Departments of Nutritional Sciences and Medicine University of Toronto

Sherry Casey Senior Director Nutrition and Regulatory Affairs Loblaw Brands Ltd

Dr Cyril Kendall Research Scientist Department of Nutritional Sciences University of Toronto

Collaborating to Create Product Lines with Healthy Food Ingredients

For over 20 years, Dr David Jenkins, Nutritional Scientist at the University of Toronto (UofT), and Canada's largest food distributor, Loblaws Companies, have worked together to create appealing product lines with healthy food ingredients.

"Dr Jenkins' research is different because he is working at a clinical level to see how food ingredients affect people's health," says Sherry Casey, Senior Director, Nutrition and Regulatory Affairs at Loblaw Brands Ltd. "With the knowledge that comes from these clinical trials, we can move directly to develop food products that will benefit Canadians."

Their latest collaboration, the Blue Menu line of healthier food products, is the result of many years of collaboration that began with a challenging research problem that Dr Jenkins needed to solve.

"We had a clinical trial study with the National Institutes of Health that required us to feed high fibre and low cholesterol foods to participants for a very long time," says Dr David Jenkins, Canada Research Chair in Nutrition and Metabolism at U of T and Director of the Clinical and Risk Factor Modification Centre at St Michael's Hospital. "We knew that no one would agree to participate in the trial unless the food was palatable. Loblaws offered to develop the foods for us and, in the process, create a healthy product line for their customers. Over 20 years later, they continue to be a major partner in our research."

Dr Jenkins is world-renowned for researching the effects of food and food components on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer prevention. In 1981, he discovered and developed the Glycemic Index (GI). Widely considered the gold standard for understanding and better managing glycemic control, the index categorizes and measures carbohydrates according to their effect on the body's blood sugar level.

"Dr Jenkins came up with the GI concept to analyze foods and determine which ones would be useful for the diets of individuals with Type 2 diabetes," says Dr Cyril Kendall, Research Scientist at U of T's Department of Nutritional Sciences. What Dr Jenkins found was that foods that are more slowly digested (low GI foods) cause a lower rise in blood glucose and are better assimilated by the body.

In December 2008, Drs Jenkins and Kendall released new results for their ongoing research into the health benefits of low GI diets. Published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, the study was one of the largest and most comprehensive clinical trials to look at the effect of a low GI diet. The study ran for about three years and included over 220 people. It showed that a diet with low glycemic foods (eg beans, peas, lentils, pasta and oatmeal) improved glycemic control for Type 2 diabetes and lowered the risk of heart disease.

In addition to their work on low GI diets, the researchers have also looked at the benefits of combining healthy food types into a single diet. The Portfolio Diet consists of four main components - almonds, plant sterol enriched margarines, soy protein and viscous fibres (oats and barley). Drs Jenkins and Kendall have shown that with this diet, an individual can achieve a reduction in LDL cholesterol that is equivalent to taking a statin or drug. LDL cholesterol is one of the main risk factors for heart disease.

For groundbreaking nutrition research, from clinical trials to nutrigenomics and nutraceuticals, Toronto Region is the place to be. Home to the second largest food cluster in North America, it is a growing hub of world-leading food companies employing over 78,000 people. In addition to U of T and St Michael's Hospital, the region includes food research leaders such as McMaster University, Ryerson University and the University of Guelph.

The Toronto Region is a nexus for industry and public sector R&D networks. "When you're a leading company, you need to innovate and stay out in front," says Sherry Casey. "We have our internal research and development arms but we need to reach out and connect with other groups such as the University of Toronto to extend that opportunity."

Partnerships are also important to Toronto's world-class clinical trials community. "The strength that we have in Toronto is the strength of our clinical integration," says Dr Jenkins. "We have an absolutely unprecedented ability to do clinical research of a sort that can't be done elsewhere."