The Starship Richardson is set for launch with a load of guinea pigs.
Want to be one of the guinea pigs?
The Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals at the University of Manitoba is already testing human subjects with various food products and plans more tests.
“We’re trying to keep people healthier, wiser, functional for longer,” said Peter Jones, head of the Richardson Centre.
“We’re trying to find agents that will either reduce body weight, or reduce cholesterol and heart disease risk, or lower blood sugar levels to stave off diabetes.”
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The centre is running human tests on a number of natural food products, such as pulse crops and conjugated linoleic acid from animals.
The centre was designed to allow researchers to discover whether certain compounds, substances and food have human health effects. It was opened this year and the first human tests have just begun.
As well as high tech laboratories for micro analysis of food components, the centre also has a dining hall and kitchen for feeding human test subjects.
It has been advertising in Winnipeg publications for people willing to undergo sometimes onerous requirements, such as agreeing to show up for every supper for weeks and eating the food the centre has prepared.
The subjects’ health will be analyzed to see what, if any, health effects occur.
Jones said the CLA tests could produce useful results for livestock producers, because there could be methods for boosting CLA levels in meat if the substance proves to be beneficial.
“It’s possible to enrich (CLA levels), either naturally by finding specific cattle that will produce more than others, or by artificially enhancing their levels,” Jones said.
“We’re taking artificially and naturally enhanced CLA, feeding it to people, with a view towards looking at anti-obesity effects and cancer effects, both of which have been reported before.”
He said he hopes to soon conduct canola tests as well as the current pulse tests.
“We’re really hoping to touch on all the major agricultural commodities.”
New digs
Apart from the centre’s new equipment, researchers are delighted to work in a new building that doesn’t seem like a depressing old lab.
“I’m used to working in a 50-year-old pile of bricks with few windows. Now there’s so much light that those kids (the lab researchers) have been complaining that it’s too bright,” said Jones with a laugh.
“We call it the Starship Richardson. It seems like it’s about to lift off.”
