Iowa State University is holding an open house this afternoon for the new Nutrition and Wellness Research Center . Interim director Diane Birt says work at the facility involves the prevention of chronic diseases.Birt say their focus is finding ways to keep people healthy.
Work on the new center, located in ISU’s Research Park off Highway 30, wrapped up this fall. Birt says students and staff at the research center study food ingredients that may provide human health benefits. Birt says many companies want to make sure there’s good science behind the food packaging labels that outline a product’s health benefits.
"Those are the companies we want to work with," Birt says. The ISU Nutrition and Wellness Research Center is set up primarily for human clinical studies. "The types of studies where you would be feeding people foods that have an ingredient in them that might enhance health," Birt says.
The facility includes a metabolic kitchen, dining areas, laboratories, conference rooms, and exercise assessment facilities. The center was constructed, in part, with a $700,000 grant from the Iowa Department of Economic Development.