Nutritional and Health Aspects of Food in Oceania

Diana is an interdisciplinary researcher with varied interests in food consumption issues related to the global consequences of human nutritional habits, especially global meat consumption, alternative proteins, novel food processing technologies including non-thermal, behavioural and attitudinal change, environmental sustainability and food harmonization. She has a PhD in Humanities specialised in Food Sustainability from Curtin University, Perth, Australia. Currently she is a Centre Manager of the Centre for Advanced Food Engineering at the University of Sydney and Research Fellow with Curtin University’s Sustainability Policy (CUSP) Institute. Diana’s books have won three awards: the Australian National Best Book winner in 2019 and the World’s Best Book award 2020 in the Vegetarian book category from the Gourmand Awards, who also recognized her co-edited book ‘Environmental, Health and Business Opportunities in the New Meat Alternatives Market’.

Dr. Conrad Perera's research interests are in the Chemistry and Technology of processing of food. He has consulted extensively to FAO, UNIDO, World Bank, Secretariat of the Pacific Community and other national and international organizations on food processing projects. He is currently supervising several projects on the extraction of bioactive peptides from micro-algae, green-lipped mussels, and chicken feet; arabinogalactan proteins from honey; flavonoids from honey and antioxidant activity; galactans from native plants and their action on galectin-3; bioactive polysaccharides from mushrooms; added Vitamin D degradation in dried milk products; Neuroprotective compounds from Centella asiatica.