Food industry professionals will gather May 25-26 in Sacramento for a conference focused on developing and marketing "functional foods."

The two-day conference, "Bringing Functionality to Market" is sponsored by the California Institute for Food and Agricultural Research at the University of California, Davis. The meeting will be held in UC Davis' MIND Institute Auditorium in Sacramento.

Functional foods are those food products that not only provide calories and basic nutrients, but also contain biological compounds that boost physical and mental health and lower the risk of disease. They include foods that naturally contain specific minerals, vitamins, fatty acids or dietary fiber and food products to which beneficial compounds have been added.

"This unique conference combines technology and entrepreneurship to bridge very different disciplines and explore the convergence of food, medicine and agriculture, and the dynamics of the venture community to invest capital in new products, new patents and new companies," said Sharon Shoemaker, director of the California Institute for Food and Agricultural Research. "The goal of this conference is to provide participants with new insight into this realm of 'food for health' and its commercial potential."

Sessions will be held from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. May 25, followed by a 7 p.m. dinner at the Sutter Club. Conference topics will cover the scientific basis for functional foods, marketing forces and future lifestyle trends. Speakers will include UC Davis researchers and industry representatives.

The dinner speaker will be Dr. Ralph deVere White, director of the UC Davis Cancer Center and professor and chair of urology. He will talk about "Chemoprevention in Prostate Cancer."

The second day of the conference, running from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., will focus on specific technologies and sources of venture capital, an activity co-sponsored by UC Davis Connect, a program in the UC Davis Office of Research.

The California Institute for Food and Agricultural Research was established by UC Davis' College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences to enhance research collaboration, program sponsorship and technology exchange between the food and agricultural industries.

Reporters are welcome to attend all or part of the conference free of charge but should RSVP to Suanne Klahorst, CIFAR, at (530) 752-5686 or sjklahorst @ucdavis.edu.