[Food Ingredients and Hygiene: Exploring the Functions of Food Ingredients Through Hygiene Studies]

Hygiene is a field of study that aims to "protect health" and "protect lifestyle" of people from external factors such as bacteria, poor nutrition, and toxic chemicals, as well as internal factors such as lifestyle and stress. In the early days of hygiene science in Japan, the results of nutritional epidemiology research by Dr. Kanehiro Takaki, a naval doctor who studied medicine in Kagoshima, on the prevention of beriberi, a national disease at the time, were highly regarded internationally. Since then, hygiene research on food ingredients has been vigorously pursued to expand from basic research to applied research, as exemplified by the development of the allithiamine. The symposium "Food Ingredients and Hygiene: Exploring the Functions of Food Ingredients from Hygiene" was organized by the Young Researchers Association at the 94th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Hygiene (Kagoshima) to introduce recent research and examples of industry-academia collaboration. Young researchers involved in hygiene research on foods and food materials presented their recent work ranging from basic research, such as the functional evaluation of foods by animal experiments and the evaluation of the effects of polyphenols and yogurt on health, which have long been studied, to applied research leading to the commercialization of foods with useful physiological effects. This mini-review is a summary of the symposium. As the Young Researchers Association, we hope that this symposium/mini-review will encourage young researchers to become interested in various functions of food ingredients, conduct related research, and consider how to contribute their research results to society.