Objectives

The general objectives of BaSeFood are to contribute in establishing a rationale for integrating the concepts of health promoting foods and traditional foods, in order to create the knowledge base for a sustainable economic development in the area of production and processing of tradition-based healthy foods.

The medium-term strategic lines within which BaSeFood will operate are:
Create opportunities . These will be attained through RTD activities, generating a base of knowledge from which SMEs and other stakeholders can derive transferable information for product development in a European regulatory context.
Create trust . Especially in consumers, in order to enforce the synergy between the health promoting and the traditional food characteristics, and support direct perception of food value, also by addressing environmental, conservation and equity issues.

Specific final objectives are:

• to produce integrated specific reports of selected traditional foods, which may contribute to proprietary claims at a national or European level, or health and nutritional claims;
• to produce additional documentation and reports on a larger number of foods and describe all aspects of present available knowledge (main raw materials, other ingredients, ways of preparation, historical and folkloric features), which may prove useful for future proprietary or health claims, or to stimulate the interest of stakeholders;
• to produce analytical data of the overall nutritional and characteristic bioactive content of selected foods, and compare it with the results available in Food composition databases, with special reference to EuroFIR-BASIS;
• to produce the documentation of key micro-organisms for both food processing, with special respect to the effect on bioactive retention, and food safety;
• to generate experimental data from in vitro, in vivo and clinical trials, adequate for health claim substantiation;
• to generate data about bioactive retention in relation to processing;
• to generate improved flow charts for traditional foods;
  produce a list of priority traditional foods with attached health claims on the basis of stakeholders responses;
• produce survey-based reports on the attitude of various categories of consumers towards Black Sea area traditional foods;
• to involve a wide range of stakeholders, with special respect to SMEs and local interest groups in the development of the project;
• to enlarge the knowledge base necessary for a sustainable development of health promoting traditional foods;
• to establish an interaction with current running initiatives about plant food biodiversity characterisation in  relation to food differentiation and food security.