Diets are a fashion and they are always changing. Almost without respite, we passed the liquids’ diet, the lingual mesh and many more. And now, it is the gluten’s turn.
It seems that the main guilty of all kind of fat problems is the gluten. But, is it true? For centuries, we have consumed bread, pasta and pastries. However, the ‘devastating’ gluten effects are more recent. We know some people who suffered stomachaches, headaches or other symptoms when they ate bread or derived products. When they asked their doctors, they said them that they were celiac or gluten intolerant, so they must consume a gluten-free diet. We have started to realize that our friends are losing weight with this kind of diet, and we have had the idea to prove it. But, is it so simple? Could you say goodbye to fatness without the gluten? I suspect not.
From the Spanish Celiacs Associations Federation recommend not start a gluten-free diet without having a bowel biopsy showing intolerance to gluten. Celiacs have to stop eating gluten because if they do it, lymphocytes attack the tissue of the intestine, causing the disappearance of the hair of it and having consequently poor absorption of nutrients.
Nutrition experts are cautious and they advise us against eating without gluten, because of the negative effects it could have on our health. Make a gluten-free diet, without professional assistance, can lead to an unbalanced and inadequate diet with more disadvantages than advantages.
Do you know that oats and barley (food with gluten) are high in soluble fiber?
Soluble fiber is formed by compounds which capture much water and are capable of forming viscous gels, help the growth of bacterial flora and decrease and slow the absorption of sugars and fats in food. This contributes to lower cholesterol and glucose blood. Therefore, it is necessary to consume foods such as oats and barley, which also have gluten. Here we only mention fiber, but foods rich in gluten also provide other essential nutrients for humans like proteins, vitamins and essential minerals.
For all these reasons, it is advisable to stay away from the pastries and the precooked and make a healthier lifestyle with a balanced diet. We must try to replace these products with other homemade foods and fewer calories and, as my mother said, eat a bit of everything but without excesses. In addition, it is important to relying on innovation to solve the problems of people with intolerances or special needs.
In CARTIF, we work on several projects in order to replace the use of industrial additives for other natural and animal fats for healthy compounds. These technological contributions work and help us to eat better. You may not have a perfect figure but, undoubtedly, you will be healthier.
The United Nations, led by its Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has launched the 2016 International Year of Legumes under the slogan “nutritious seeds for a sustainable future”. The objective is raising awareness about the protein power and health benefits of all kinds of dried beans and peas, boost their production and trade, and encourage new and smarter uses throughout the food chain.
Clearly we want to eat better. Healthier, more natural, more plant products even more sustainable. We are conscious of what consumption of certain nutrients means for our health, such as dietary fiber that is known to be beneficial for health because affects in the intestinal function, weight control, reduce the risk of certain heart diseases and type II diabetes. And the fashionable proteins (even better if they are from plant origin) play a structural function in our body. We want to consume more vitamins, minerals and bioactive compounds that help to prevent some diseases, to have good health and even delay cellular aging. Moreover, we know the benefits of following the Mediterranean Diet pattern; rich, varied and healthy in which the consumption of our typical food products and ways of cooking are included.
However, even though we have all this knowledge, according to data recently released by the World Health Organization (WHO), consumption of fast food in Spain has increased in recent years and, even worse, this data is expected to increase to 50 % over the next five years.
But… consumers, we’re in luck! We have within our reach tiny packages with all those nutrients that we are asking for. Their name are pulses and are considered gluten-free and functional foods that exert a positive effect on certain metabolic functions such as the cholesterol levels, the glycemic index, reduces lipid accumulation in the body, promote intestinal transit and can prevent the occurrence of certain types of cancer, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease or diabetes. What´s more, they are sold at the supermarket and have a very affordable price.
Undoubtedly, legumes should be an important part of the diet because they are a great source of proteins and carbohydrates. The average protein content of legumes varies between 17 and 40%, considerably higher than the cereals (3-7%) and are considered proteins of high biological value and approximately equal to the protein content in the meat. They are also rich in complex carbohydrates, including significant amounts of dietary fiber (9-27 %) and a low fat content.
Moreover, the legumes are very important from the point of view of maintaining the agricultural ecosystem due not only to the cultivation area occupied worldwide, but also to the ability for fixing atmospheric nitrogen increasing soil fertility and reducing the use of nitrogen fertilizers. Waste footprint (carbon footprint + water footprint) of legume crops is lower than other crops, so it promotes sustainability and contributes to mitigate climate change. And last but not least, legumes are even more important in developing countries for their good shelf life and low cost.
It´s clear that legumes are an essential part of many diets in the world including the Mediterranean. Not in vain, in the new healthy eating pyramid, legume consumption is recommended at least twice a week. The new pyramid considers the importance of consuming traditional, local and friendly products with the environment, such as legumes.
For all this reasons, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has launched the 2016 International Year of Pulses. Nevertheless, despite its importance and the growing of legumes has increased by 20% over the last 10 years (mainly due to animal feed demand) its consumption has declined in favor of other protein sources such as meat. This decline is due to social and cultural reasons; from our new life style (we are cooking less and less), to a perception of legumes as “poor food” or even the rejection of their consumption because they produce flatulence.
Challenges in innovation to boost consumption
It is very clear: food industry must innovate to cover this demand through ready-to-eathigh quality dishesbased on legumes that meet with a good nutritional profile, or, for example, legumes in the form of flour.
Pulse flours are a very good alternative to increase consumption of legumes, especially in children. With an appreciable nutritional value, good dietary fiber source, and gluten-free, these ingredients just need a little imagination, a little technology and a big desire to investigate to get very good products such bread, biscuits, pasta or snacks.
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution Fourth, some predict a dark future for the worker in a factory where robots and smart manufacturing machines will replace a man who will be limited to just supervise the operation of the factory of the future.
At present the small scale transformations or trends that will define this Factory of the future are already happening. These technological developments and market trends will define its appearance and operation.
The following table lists some of these trends and the expected positive or negative impact for the role (or lack of it) of the worker of the future.
The negative impact of some of these trends is mainly due to the high levels of automation that are needed to achieve the objectives.
What can we do to adapt to these changes and prevent this revolution run over us? The natural response is to worry and choose conservative strategies to stop this revolution at all cost. There has always been a fear of job loss of with any technological breakthrough. For example, with the invention of the printing the scribes nearly disappeared and the invention of the personal computer put in the hands of anyone the desktop publishing. In other cases, with technological breakthroughs new jobs appeared such as those associated with commercial aviation.
During the different industrial revolutions, the role of the worker has been rather passive in terms of how he assimilated and influenced the transformation of their work. With the First Industrial Revolution, artisan work (manual and customized) became a work driven by coal-based energy and steam. With the Second revolution, the work was divided into simple and repetitive operations that allowed the mass production of identical products. With the Third and subsequent digitization of manufacturing (computers, PLC, CAD / CAM …), the obsession with quality and the elimination or reduction of defects introduced new organizational concepts such as lean manufacturing or TPM that tried to reinforcethe active role of the worker as responsible for the product and not just a gear in a complicated clockwork. However, at present, with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the progresses in information technologies and the globalization allow us to attend these changes in a more reactive way.
Then, what will be the evolution of the work in the factory of the future? In many aspects, the worker’s role has not changed much since Adam Smith proposed that, as long as the work is divided into operations and paid properly, the matter is settled. However, statistics do not confirm Smith’s premise.
So, what is the recipe to create more productive and healthy environments? It seems that team managers have a large share of responsibility in this regard: recognize the good job, show that their contributions are valuable, provide adequate tools, listen them and include them in problem-solving. In short: to create a trusty environment for open discussion. Simple, isn’t it?
Not so much, one can not fall in the trap and patronize the worker. There is also needed a personal commitment and a change of attitude. Even in monotonous works are examples of motivated and committed employees. In these cases there is a common denominator: people who are not content just doing the tasks as specified in their job description. Hospital cleaning staff that interact and give support to the relatives of the patient, hairdressers that listen to the client or workers who strive to be more efficient and look for improvements that have the effect of reducing the environmental impact of its activities. Increased autonomy and decision-making capacity result in an increased worker satisfaction. So, how to increase the autonomy in a production line? Precisely technological breaktroughs are the answer to this challenge.
Improvements in automation, adding more robots to perform supporting tasks (internal logistics), collaborative robotics which share space securely with workers and data analytics systems that facilitate more effective decision-making, can be seen as threats to the survival of the role of the worker or as opportunities so this role evolve towards a more active position in the revolution to come.
During a recent meeting I participated, where the vision and priorities of the factory of the future was analyzed, various international experts concluded that the role of workers must evolve from a skills focused in the machinery they use (which will be more and more autonomous and intelligent) to become experts in the manufacturing process in which they are working.
How to protect jobs into the factory of the future? One of the recipes will be to provide the workers tools that result in their increased autonomy and decision making so they can perform their job in a highly flexible environment achieving an adeqaute job satisfaction.
Who knows, maybe in the future, each worker could take to work his own robot as a tool. Thus, the workers with the best “trained” or programmed assistant-robot will the ones with an ensured job.
Have you ever thought on the importance of the monuments close to you?. Do you happen to know they really are a source of employment and local development?. Here you are a few lines to explain it, and also to make you understand how the applied RTD is effectively contributing to the study, protection, conservation, refurbishment and reuse of cultural heritage.
Since 1999, with the Florence Conference, and later with the World Bank and the UNESCO reports, cultural heritage is considered a rightful source of socio-economic development for the countries. It is really a form of capital that the economist David Throsby noted as ‘cultural capital’, i.e. an asset with specific key features (the economic value is added to the cultural value -primordial, symbolic, intangible-).
Europe is the region that counts with the most important and the richest cultural heritage all over the world. This contributes to attract millions of tourists every year. Obviously it helps to create jobs and enhances the quality of life of European citizens while reinforcing a common shared identity.
The European Union Treaty (Article 167) specifies that safeguarding cultural heritage (moveable and immoveable) must be treated as a priority for the EU and is the legal basis for protection initiatives including research on cultural heritage. Besides, UNESCO expressly states that “the protection of cultural heritage, as an expression of living culture, contributes to the development of societies and the building of peace”.
The protection and preservation of important monuments and sites is more pressing than ever as cultural heritage is exposed to pollution, climate change and socio-economic pressures. According to specialists in the field, the activities oriented to ensure the sustainability of heritage are proving to have a major impact boosting the local economy and attracting foreign capital (because of related cultural tourism).
The following figures emerging from the EVoCH Platform within CARTIF is a founding member, will take you on the way of we are talking about:
The recognition of the importance of the mentioned aspects leads cultural heritage to be considered into specific RTD proposals in the current EU Research and Innovation programme (Horizon 2020). In fact, since 1986 the EU has been supporting research for the preservation of tangible cultural heritage to develop ‘state of the art’ methodologies, tools and products.
During the last years, a few successful results of technology transfer are giving evidence that the most effective and practical way of supporting and developing innovative services, is a collaboration between applied research organizations and enterprises to make these fit ICT tools into their daily work. In CARTIF, we have been working in this field more than 15 years. Some of our projects, INCEPTION, COST Action i2MHB, SHBUILDINGS, RENERPATH or 3D Virtual Restoration of Historical Paintings, have developed the most innovative technologies.
A researcher installs a sensor in Palencia´s cathedral
This means that new technological solutions are really the basis to meet actual demands on the five internationally recognised levels of intervention on cultural heritage: study, protection, conservation, restoration and dissemination. Only in this way, reliable, fast, easy-to-use and affordable tools will be available to shift the very traditional procedures of those levels to the 21st century we are living in.
Consequently stable and high-quality associated skilled jobs will be created, directly related to an intrinsic and non-transferable resource such cultural heritage is by itself.
Normally the idea that the average citizen has about the savings in the energy bill, depending on the equipment installed, is centred around the sacrifice of the personal welfare (lowering a bit the temperature at home in winter and rising in summer) or making important expenses (like solar panels) that are redeemed in a distant future and could generate something called, in economy terms, “loss of chance”, that can be translated as the money that could be used for some immediate pleasures.
Until not long ago the ways to effectively save were the same expressed beforehand, and it was clear that it could not do anything about with the exception of certain investments from the governments. However, some new tools have appeared recently that, through the means of technologies affordable and available for everyone, can reach the goal of saving money but without sacrificing comfort or making big expenses.
One of the solutions that is currently being developed is the so-called Building Energy Management Systems (acronym BEMS from now on). The BEMS makes use of software that gathers data from several origins (sensors, data bases, weather stations, timetables, polls and commands from users, etc.) and takes some decisions based on defined algorithms which adjust the behaviour of the equipment installed on the building to minimize the energy consumption but always keeping the marked comfort standards. In other words, the BEMS works like a butler who would be adjusting the home devices in order to create comfort optimizing the energy expenditure.
But what does the average user see about all this? Of course, although a user with large knowledge about building equipment and computing could install a simple BEMS, the truth is that the BEMS requires a large quantity of work:
The current commercial solutions require hiring technicians to set up the devices, and also a preliminary report done by the enterprise offering the product. Without question, in order to adjust the final price and minimize problems, the actual BEMS tend to be “locked products”, with fixed components, proprietary network protocols and layouts owned by the company or the consortium/association, and software solutions copyrighted and not accessible to the user or the maintenance service (save for the case that the service is the one offered by the company, obviously).
Taking into account all the former considerations, it is clear that the BEMS still need some research on open systems, also versatile but efficient, to generate some market competition, enhance the current systems, and open the possibility of using them inside the maximum number of dwellings in Europe, where there is a big concern about these issues as long as the dwelling stock there is old, inefficient in terms of energy usage and with poor levels of comfort (from the numbers of the EU, the 75% of the houses don’t apply energy efficiency measurements).
CARTIF, through the Division of Energy, has and still is working on European projects like E2VENT, 3ENCULT or BRESAER that include one BEMS amongst their fundamental elements of r&d, with demo sites in Spain, France, Germany, Poland and Turkey, and where CARTIF has the main role in the development of these systems.
It can be concluded that the BEMS will be, in a short term, an integral part of the equipment of any modern home, in the same way the air conditioning or the telecommunications did in the past, contributing in the enhancement of the welfare and the energy efficiency.
LIFE Smart Hospital project researchers explain us how a normal hospital can turn into a smart hospital, in Euranet radio (audio only available in Spanish).
