Wolfram Brück studied microbiology in Minnesota and Manchester (UK).  In 2003, he finished his Ph.D. with Prof. Glenn Gibson on the influence of prebiotic milk peptides on infant health.  He joined the Institute of Life Technologies as head of the microbiology laboratories in 2014 and in April he directed a national competence center for research application on “sustainable diets and precision nutrition”.

Shireen [0:33]: In this episode, we welcome Dr. Wolfram Brück, who shares his international perspectives on food and health microbiology. We’ll discuss Infant Nutrition, the unique field of “foodomics”, and how it links our diet to chronic illnesses through our genes. Expect to learn about new food trends such as sustainable proteins and turning food waste into something good for us and the planet. Stay tuned. Dr. Wolfram Brück studied Microbiology in Minnesota and Manchester. In 2003, he finished his PhD with Professor Glenn Gibson on the influence of prebiotic milk peptides on infant health. He joined the Institute of Life Technologies as head of the microbiology laboratories in 2014, and is currently directing a national Competence Center for Research application on sustainable diets and precision nutrition, which has to be submitted in April. Welcome, Dr. Brück.

Dr. Brück [1:39]: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Shireen [1:55]: Such a pleasure having you on Dr. Brück. So diving right in, I actually do want to take a step back. And I want to learn a little bit more from you about why this, what is your journey has been like going into personalized nutrition first help us understand what personalized nutrition is. And then what drew you to it?

Dr. Brück [1:55]: So I’m a traditional microbiologist actually. So my journey into nutrition has been something that’s ongoing from this really clinical based looking at diseases or acute disease, actually something that becomes more chronic. And of course, we talked about chronic diseases. These things are not classically treated medically. And we have to be looking at nutrition. And for me, personalized nutrition is really something that each individual reacts to different stimuli into different nutrients differently based on genetics. And this is something we’re just starting to understand, really, as these new high throughput technologies come through. And this is something that’s ongoing, also in science as well. And we’re getting more and more data with more and more novel technologies. And we can see that everybody sort of responds to things differently, then we can say just, you know, everybody’s responses same to the same really, this is simply not true in most cases, actually now we can see

Shireen [2:53]: And I find the topic of personalized nutrition just to be so incredibly fascinating, right? Because when you talk about personal and you talk about variances across different groups, I can’t imagine personalized nutrition to be any easier as much. I would think comparatively, when you take a generalized nutrition approach, it is much more blanket, but it may or may not work for everyone. How do you sort of balance the innovation within precision nutrition and sort of general nutrition guidance and advice within this field?

Dr. Brück [3:21]: Well, of course, we learn more as time goes by. And that’s why of course, you know, some people might be concerned saying that, well, one day, they’re saying one thing, but the next day, they’re saying the opposite thing. And that’s just basically, we’re scientists, we’re continually learning. And we’re improving our knowledge, basically. And then, of course, we can change our minds as new information actually comes through. And we just have to adjust some things basically. And of course, general nutrition, of course, is we can generalize things, certainly, of course, but then maybe some things come into more a personalized approach. And we do see things like maybe some things get more personalized in terms of what nutrients become more important for certain groups of people, certain lifestyle, certain stage of life as well, maybe something’s changed as well, for those groups. So we’re gaining a bit more focus on different groups. But maybe we even going one step further, saying, well, in the future, we’re saying, we’re looking at somebody’s genes, we’re looking at somebody’s lifestyle, at somebody’s nutritional aspect, we say, well, maybe looking at the data we gathered from you, you should be doing this. And this is a journey that has started already. But from day to day, we’re getting better and better at this and we’re improving things as we go along. And of course, you know, in the future, as technologies become cheaper as well, maybe we’ll actually go to the doctor and say, Well, this is my gene. These are my samples so urine, fecal samples, blood or whatever. have at it,  tell me what’s good and this person, the doctor or the nutritionist, especially as well we say Well, based on your profile based on the fluids you have gave us. We have from you, you should be doing this.

Shireen [5:02]: What a more high value future that is right a legit high value discussion that is with your provider with your doctor in a world like that, double clicking into that, in fact, you mentioned different stages of life as well, which is where I would like to understand a little bit more around your research. Now, it may not seem much on the surface, but I know there is more to this. Can you please help us to understand your research regarding Infant Nutrition? Now, what are some of the key takeaways? And why does it even matter for us to think about infant nutrition?

Dr. Brück [5:31]: Well, first, we have to imagine we start our journey, actually, before we are born, the health status of the mother, BMI, living nutritional aspects, everything basically surrounds the mother and this goes into the infant. And specifically me as a microbiologist, I would like to look at the microbiota, of course, so the guts, bacteria that are in humans as well. And we start generally, what we think as of at least right now, when you’re born, you start off with a gut that’s almost sterile. As far as we know, this might change in the future again, and then based on your motive of delivery, what you’ve been fed, whether it’s breast milk, whether it’s formula, whether it’s anything else, because maybe you’re living in an area where there’s a crisis happening right now, and some of these normal options might not be available to you, this decides on how you get inoculated, because we can imagine, of course, these foods contain bacteria. And these bacteria then back inoculate into the gut, and start to proliferate with all the foods that are being available to those organisms in the gut. And we do see that, based on this programming, what bacteria come in, at what stage, from what mode of nutrition, what mode of delivery as well, we get programmed, first of all, with our immune system, we get programmed with different health, maybe don’t get the best start in life, we get these bacteria that might be not as good as like bifida bacteria, lactobacillus, you know, those organs that we really know quite well, and are called probiotics, of course, maybe then you’re more programmed to some diseases like chronic disease, metabolic diseases, some immune problems, allergies, cardiovascular problems, or all these chronic non communicable diseases, you might actually be programmed already in the first days of life in this, what do you read about and looked at? Because my interest is the first six months of life? What actually happens? And what are the influence in the first six months of life that really start the programming of this adult, this human that we’re going to become in the future? And what actually is that influence with these first few days in life, basically, and the microbiota and the nutrition and everything else running all these different factors

Shireen [7:49]: that is so incredibly fascinating. Tell us more about this research? What have you been able to find? And I know you’ve also done this study and research across the United States in Europe. Help us understand some of the similarities or even differences across countries?

Dr. Brück [8:02]: Yeah, so I actually went there as an exchange student to Minnesota, first of all, so I finished my high school over there, and then went to the pre med path in Minnesota. But then basically, I became more and more interested in bacteria and through different courses. So kudos to my professors back in Minnesota for interesting be in microbiology in sort of, like changing my life to sort of like come from what I saw definitely becoming a doctor to become a microbiologist, and now more microbiological nutrition, maybe you can say something like that. And I did my undergraduate over there, and then went to a medical school, but looking at the Medical Microbiology in Manchester. So I worked with a diagnostic lab in Manchester at the University Hospital, at medical school as well and look, first of all, and respiratory disease because we’re in WHO center for pertussis or whooping cough, actually. And I saw this love troubles with infants, of course, we tried to get new methods for early detection, better detection of these diseases. But then I sort of like thought, well, this is quite grim, as well, I’d maybe want to start at the positive aspect, how to improve situations before they actually happen. That’s when I came to Reading with Glenn Gibson as well and then learned about probiotics and prebiotics, and how they can influence actually, how we grew up how we come, adults have become, you know, a functioning organism or a function ecosystem, we could almost say, because we have, of course, trillions of different bacteria. And then we saw, of course, with probiotics and prebiotics, that if you eat those organisms, we eat these different compounds that can feed the organisms in your gut or different niches as well. Basically, you can actually improve the situation with this. We can see that especially with infants, and I worked on infant formula, improving infant forumla to make it more like breast milk, as breast milk, of course, is the gold standard still what we want to feed your baby. When this is not possible, we have formula. But of course, we want to improve formula to make more and more breast milk like. And I particularly work on a compound called Alpha lactalbumin. The story around this basically Alpha lactalbumin is the most prominent whey protein in breast milk. It also exists in cow’s milk. So the base of what formula is basically, but in much reduced content. And if we saw Well, this protein or this peptide is there in breast milk, what happens actually, if we improve the protein contents with this predominant protein from cow’s milk, but in infant formula, as well. And we can actually see that if you do this, he can lower the protein content, because alpha lactalbumin is a major source of cysteine, and tryptophan. And therefore, we can reduce that overall protein content of formula. And therefore, of course, you don’t have those parameters. Everybody knows, if you feed formula to your baby, they’re slightly more pudgy, they can weigh much more weight than infants fed breast milk. And that’s actually the added protein content to make up this lack of amino acids in formula. And if you just add these peptides in formula, we can reduce the overlap in protein content and babies become much more leaner, much more similar to infants that had human milk. But as we saw, because tryptophan is an agonist, and opioid agonist, we can actually see that this actually improves sleep patterns as well. And of course, we can see sort of like infants that formed and maybe they’re more prone to these more sleep deprived, maybe they were cranky, maybe even colic as well, we could see that by adding just this alpha lactalbumin to this formula. We had all these problems reduced. But also we did another study, because you have to go back, I’m a microbiologist, I look at infant diseases as well, we actually did a study where we looked at enteropathogenic, E. coli, and enteropathogenic E.Coli as a major source of bacterial pathogens in Formula for infants that don’t have a good water source. Okay. And if we take this off elective human milk, of course, then we saw that well, even if we have enteropathogenic E. Coli in there, the diarrhea disappeared. compared to regular formula, compared to formula with other proteins that we added as well, we had the same results that we saw with breast milk, just by adding this other formula, this other peptide in there.

Shireen [12:32]: Oh, powerful. And by just adding this peptide, you were able to do all of this, now is the idea then for the nutrition of the infant baby to move more to word adding this type of peptide lowering the protein, of course, from the formula milk, but extracting more of this from cow’s milk, or where does this go next from here? 

Dr. Brück [12:50]: Well, I launched the product actually in South America with an adult’s Alpha lactalbumin. To the infant format. This is of course now available on the market. What we see now of course, we see the strengths of other compounds that have been found in human milk, and actually humanizing formula by adding something called you know, your milk oligosaccharides. And we can see this, this has been the buzzword almost for the last few weeks, few years, actually, in the infant formula markets where you know, contains human milk oligosaccharide, therefore becomes more human like that formula. But we have so many other compounds that we can add as well. We can have DHA, which is also common as well, we can have prebiotics like galacto oligosaccharides in there, and other contents, which all improve the overall composition of formula and make it more and more breast milk. Like we still can’t mimic, of course, what we can see in, you know, human milks by adding immunoglobulins and other things, because breast milk, of course, is highly dimeric, compound products, that changes according to the needs of the baby. And we can achieve this, of course, that sort of focus, or day to day shifts, or even intraday shifts with breast milk that we can improve. Certainly, we are certainly much more improved than what we saw. Then when I grew up. I was given formula when I was a baby. And if I would be growing up now, basically, with what is available, of course, maybe it will be completely different. Who knows

Shireen [14:20]: how interesting. You know, a moment ago, you mentioned even that connection between infant nutrition, and then a future state and like down the road, perhaps even the onset of a chronic condition. Can you explain to us what that relationship looks like and how it translates back to infant nutrition? And then what key insights do you have from this field that might be even better our understanding of this relationship between diet and genetics? Essentially, how much of it is in our control and how much is completely out of our control?

Dr. Brück [14:52]: I would say unfortunately, maybe it’s in the worst case completely out of our control because you can see we’re 1.3 to 10 times more bacteria than were human. If you look at the cells in our body, basically, we’re also many more times in terms of genetic, actually bacteria than we are human because bacteria outnumbered us many, many fold, of course, and therefore we can say, Okay, well, if we have all this genetic potential, if we have all these different cells laying around us, basically, of course, it will have some sort of influence. And therefore, we can say, of course, what we see now is that, well, maybe some of those chronic diseases start in the gut. And one of the big thoughts right now is something called low grade inflammation. So the thought is, we don’t have the right diet, we don’t feed the right bacteria. And therefore their signals and compounds are being excreted by those organisms that grow up based on what we feed them. And the signals that come through made actually cause leakage in the gut, these signals come into our body into other places, start a very low grade inflammation in the gut, basically, which is of cascades onwards, and spirals out of control to where we have cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, or any of these other chronic diseases, which are highly prevalent, of course, in our society these days. But again, I would just have to say that a lot of these things, there’s a lot of research going out. But of course, sometimes reach is a bit contrary to each other, what we do need, more larger scale clinical trials for this with a good definition of what the outcome is on those clinical trials. And this is something that’s still lacking, we’re still going with this. And of course, part of this application that we’re trying to submit is trying to improve this immediate needs of providing a diet that’s first of all sustainable for the planet, but also sustainable for humans. And sustainability for humans, of course, improving these non communicable diseases, with those immediate needs. And then, of course, enlarging this to all of society in the end. 

Shireen [17:05]: You know, speaking of which, among your current projects, what are some of these exciting discoveries that you’re coming across that you’ve made, that could really change how we think about food and nutrition, and again, impacting this relation with chronic conditions down the road?

Dr. Brück [17:20]: Well, of course, most of my research is still with infants, because that’s really my passion. Of course, we see in my research we’ve done on different formulas, while in clinical trials, where we look at different compositions of breast milk, of milk formula, I should say, at this point, of course. And we do now follow more infants, of course, in a longer period of time to see how they actually grew up with these different formula. And this is, again, something that’s ongoing. But of course, we can see that some of the composition in some of those compounds, we put into breast milk to have a significant effect in terms of microbiota. But maybe also, of course, chronic disease in the future. This is something goes on with infants. But of course, we can take this knowledge as well into humans, or into adults, of course, babies are humans as well, of course, but we can see, of course, some of the troubles that of course, now these days, as well, there’s a lot of plant based nutrition that is coming up, of course, you know, we all want to do our part, to improve life on the planet for the next generations to come. And plant based nutrition, plant based proteins. In particular, are a big part of this, what we do maybe sometimes is there’s maybe some anti nutrients and plant based proteins, plant based products that would need to reduce maybe some of those plant based proteins as well. And as good with bioavailability as maybe the animal counterparts. This can be, of course, also maybe aided through different extraction techniques, maybe also through fermentation with bacteria, we can take down some of those compounds, we don’t want to have an improved digestibility as well. And of course, if we do that, and of course, we have an effect also on the gut and maybe ate some of this low grade inflammation as well, and improve the chronic diseases that are going on as well. 

Shireen [19:09]: You know, and you bring up such an interesting point around sustainability and sort of looking ahead at some of these challenges. What are some other promising sustainable alternative protein sources you’re exploring in your research? And how might they impact our approach to nutrition today?

Dr. Brück  [19:27]: Well, of course, first of all, I mean, everybody looks at plant based nutrition right now. And plant based proteins is by far the biggest field in that certain we’re doing some activities with that. But also some of the other compounds, we’re looking at single cell protein, maybe as well. Of course, fungal protein is a big part of this. Everybody has heard of corn, for example, that has been around for a long time already. So some of these proteins that aren’t maybe even available on the market yet that maybe we haven’t even thought of as well. Also, algae protein is a big thing that’s come Coming up as well, and the for the recent week, recent years as well. And certainly some of these algae, we’re having very few allergies right now that are on the market. Everybody knows what spirulina chlorella maybe. But there’s, of course now 1000s of different algae that nobody has looked at. And maybe those are the sustainable protein of the future. But we just nobody has looked at this yet. And this is part of the activities that have ongoing as well to look at different algae, what are the protein contents, what are also the other products in this algae as well. Of course, everybody knows algae oil as well. So omega three fatty acids, proteins, but maybe also the extra polysaccharides. So there we go and back into probiotics as well. So we can maybe split that cell and take its parts and make the best out of the separate parts of the cell, basically, and then provide an alternative, of course, you know, algae can be a carbon sink. So we take some of the carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere, and therefore, we’re creating foods that is getting more and more carbon, neutral, or even maybe taking some of that carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. So we’re improving by eating more of these new diets, basically, we can improve the planet as a whole as well.

Shireen [21:15]: How does your, as you mentioned that, how does your research transform food waste into valuable bioactive compounds? And what potential benefits does this offer for both nutrition and environment sustainability?

Dr. Brück  [21:30]: Well, of course, going back to a plant based protein, you can say, Okay, we have these proteins in there. But how much protein is in a plant? It varies quite a lot, of course, you know, but you know, not me restrict the algae, but not restricted plants. But maybe algae maybe have a 60% protein content, if we really serve like grow them perfectly. And I’m very sort of like positive in terms of like, protein content. But of course, that means there’s 40% other things in there. And we’re now living in a stage in an environment where we want to have a circular bioeconomy, it’s called. So we’re taking a product, and we’re taking everything else that would be usually thrown away, and putting that into different product streams as well. So we have a net zero waste that’s been produced. So every single compound that has been produced within a product stream gets used for different product streams. To the point we have nearly no garbage left. Basically, it’s a no surplus food waste. another project, For this, of course, also maybe taking that some of these foods that we use, not right now and throw them away, as well, because a lot of food is being thrown away, I think in Switzerland 10 tonnes of bread per day is thrown and taking some of those wastes that are generated, of course, and putting those into different food streams. And traditionally, of course, we’ve done some waste valorization, as it’s called for a long time already. But we were looking at really serving low monetary value for those wastes that we can put into biogas, we can put them to animal feeds. And of course, animals, you know, 1000 liter of water for one kilogram of beef, it’s incredibly wasteful. And that’s where we go into the plant based products, of course. And therefore, of course, we’re trying to just see what we can do with these different compounds that we generate, that will be considered waste traditionally. And we’re trying to find solutions, whether it’s food, whether it’s maybe food packaging. So for example, we had a project on where we had crab shells or traps, basically, in the production back in Ireland. And then we took the crab shell, of course, the shell gets thrown away. And usually, the shell will be thrown back into the ocean that actually cause up sort of like oxygen depletion of the ocean and dead zones in the ocean. So now, people were putting into compost heaps, which also called sort of like, big troubles on land. So like, if we take the crab shells in the end, then we can actually make biodegradable plastics out of that through comes something called chitin and chitin hydrocolloids. And then we can basically say, well, we take the crab meat, and we wrap it again in the crab shell. But we’ve just transformed the crab shell, which we consider meats, waste, into a packaging that can be bought and then thrown away, and eventually it’s degraded. Or maybe we can recycle the packaging as well. That would be the next step. 

Shireen [24:28]: How fascinating. I think Dr. Brück just talking to you, I can see like, there are all of these different opportunities. And going back to what you mentioned earlier is like we’re only really limited by the research that we have at hand. Because there’s so many different possibilities in the way that a lot of these things can be broken down with or within our nutrition, packaging, food waste. If all of these different challenges can really be through innovation through this type of research that you were doing. We can find different pathways to move closer toward a sustainable lifestyle, right? What a fascinating conversation. I know we’re toward the end of this episode, however, Dr. Brück at this time, and I’m sure that people are listening going, oh, I want to learn more. So for them, how can our listeners really connect with you and continue to learn about this incredible work that you’re doing? 

Dr. Brück  [25:16]: Well, they can go through my LinkedIn page, for example, or through my web page at the university, which is available, so just have to look up my name. I’m sure you can find me quite easily, I would say. And of course, I’m always happy to be contacted by people and talk about the research of what is possible because we’re certainly only limited by our imagination. Yes.

Shireen [25:35]: Oh my, on that note, Dr. Brück, thank you so very much for your time. To our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Yumlish podcast. At this time, head over to our social media and answered this quick question. How would you reduce food waste at home for yourself? Hopefully, this episode inspired you to take some actionable steps. Again, head over to our social media, go to @Yumlish on Facebook, on Instagram, find this podcast post and comment below again to tell us how would you reduce food waste in your home? Dr. Bruck, thank you so very much again for your time.

Dr. Brück [26:08]: You’re quite welcome. It was an absolute pleasure.

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