From chef’s hat to mortarboard

Once Russell Keast swapped his chef’s hat for a mortarboard, there was no going back.

“I still enjoy cooking at home, but it was a hard life running a restaurant,” says Dr Keast, who instead of working on entrées and main courses, has given Deakin an entrée into the emerging research field of chemical detection in the oral cavity and is thus regarded as a key recruit for the University as it broadens and widens its research base.

“It can be hard at times as an academic, but when you’re working at the cutting edge in some of the areas I and my colleagues at Deakin are, it can also be very satisfying indeed.

“I got into university because I wanted to write about food, and I actually did that for a while on the Otago Daily Times while at the University at Otago in New Zealand. I wrote about beer and food.”

But unlike so many others you could name at the drop of a chef’s hat, Russell long ago swore off the idea of his own television show.

“I don’t think I’m photogenic enough for that,” he chuckles, “so I’ve forged this new career writing about food as an academic which I am very excited about, especially since coming to Deakin.”

Given the nature of some of his research that has the potential to change the way we perceive, and thus consume food, a not so easily recognised physiognomy might not be a bad idea.

With his colleagues at Deakin and at other research institutions both in Australia and in the United States, Russell has been working on projects that will cook up a few storms in the food production and policy areas, particularly but not solely in the use of caffeine in soft drinks and in sweeteners.

“We do work on caffeine and its role in food, primarily looking at its role in soft drinks and sweet solutions,” Dr Keast said.

“And the primary reason for that is caffeine has important post consumption effects. It actually increases the liking of the food, so you can infer, and that is what we do infer, that it increases consumption.

“I’ve been working with a PhD student investigating what happens when you remove caffeine from a soft drink. The results haven’t been published yet, but already they are very interesting.

“And we see this information as playing an important role in helping develop food policy, particularly in less regulated countries when it comes to food like the United States.

“The key thing we believe is that if you took the caffeine out of a food such as soft drink, sales would drop, but it has nothing to do with the flavour. We have previously shown that caffeine does not influence the flavour. So this becomes a public health issue, particularly in the area of obesity. If your caffeine intake is associated with fat or sugar, coffee laden with cream or soft drinks with sugar, you’ve got a problem.

“I do not agree that caffeine with artificial sweetneners is any better. New research is showing that the artificial sweetener actually drives appetite and those people are consuming greater quantities of other foods.

“The whole caffeine story is very interesting … part of a nice collaborative approach we’ve got looking at the issues of chemicals in food and how they are affecting our eating habits.

“We are planning on publishing the results later this year.”

Dr Keast is also excited by another long-term project on which he has been working since the turn of the century – the role of the chemical oleocanthal in olive oil.

“This is a single compound that has a peppery taste which is irritating to the back of the throat,” he explains. The only other compound we know with the peppery irritation at the back of the throat is ibuprofen, the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. Oleocanthal also mimics the pharmacology of ibuprofen and that led us to believe it is partially responsible for the health benefits associated with the Mediterranean diet. Basically consumption of oleocanthal via dietary olive oil reduces the body’s natural inflammatory response to eating. In general we eat constantly therefore our body may be in a state of chronic inflammatory response, so a natural anti-inflammatory in the food supply may be beneficial.

“The implications of this research could be major in terms of cardio-vascular disease and cancer.

“However, oleocanthal is presenting a real challenge for us. It is not an easy compound to work on. Apart from Deakin, there is only one other lab in the world, in Philadelphia where I did my post-doctoral apprenticeship for want of a better term, which is working in this area.

“But we’ve got a pretty good team involved that includes Professors Andy Sinclair and Neil Barnett and Dr Xavier Conlan and PhD student Sara Cicerale.

“It is a fantastic project, one I have been working on for nine years, and the story just gets better at every turn. I don’t think we’ve had any setbacks, or any theory that so far hasn’t been proven correct, so I am really looking forward to what the future holds on this one.”

Dr Keast may find himself not just annoying some food manufacturers, but becoming the darling of the glossies if another one of his research projects bears fruit, if you will forgive the healthy analogy.

“Another area in which we are working is the taste of fat,” he says. “Fat in terms of nutrition is regarded as bad because it is linked to obesity.

“We‘ve developed a screening tool to isolate people who are sensitive to fat. We believe people who are sensitive to fat tend to feel full before people who are not sensitive to fat and we are getting nice correlations between fat taste sensitivity and Body Mass Index measurements.

“Effectively, someone who is sensitive to fat is less overweight.

“So this research we are doing is really fascinating because it will have a huge impact in the dietary sense if we can come up with ways to help people who aren’t sensitive to fat to consume less of it. The Women’s Weekly types of publications will love it!”

Though his flat New Zealand vowels are still evident, Dr Keast these days is very happy living in suburban Melbourne and working at Deakin University among a range of colleagues mightily impressed with his enthusiasm for developing a whole new area of research.

“Russell did a lot of good work when he was in America,” said Professor Sinclair from Deakin’s School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences. “He has brought not only that knowledge to Deakin but a real drive to continue in what is a unique area.

“The sensory science is an emerging one that will give Deakin a unique opportunity to make a significant impact on the way we perceive food and Russell is the leader in this.

“And while there may be some people out there worried about some of Russell’s research, I think there would be a lot of people in the food industry who would want to use his knowledge to improve the quality of food.

“He’s a scientist reporting what he has found and if the food companies came to him he could engage them in a very successful dialogue where everyone is the winner.”

One person who is already a winner is Russell’s daughter, Hannah, who has just started school and whose lunch box is a shining example to others.

“She is very fussy about her food,” says Russell.

It obviously runs the family.

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