Good functional mitochondria are essential for a healthy organism and dysfunction leads to disease. The performance of mitochondria can be influenced by diet and dietary components. This provides opportunities for the improvement of human health and represents development opportunities for the food industry and science. Despite its importance world-wide, research in this area is extremely limited. This COST action will set up a structure to bring the mitochondrial research community and the nutrition research community together and build an integrated European research community aimed at understanding the interdependency between bioactive food components and mitochondrial function. Better understanding of this interaction may lead to important economic and social benefits by improving health, boosting industrial innovation and sustaining European competitiveness in this field. Keywords : – Bioactive food components: Vitamins; micronutrients; bioactives; polyphenols; fatty acids; carbohydrates, amino acids, peptides – Mitochondrial function: Mitochondria; apoptosis; energy metabolism; ROS (reactive oxygen species); cell dynamics; signaling; nutrient sensing – Health: Health promotion; disease prevention; increasing resistance; healthy aging – Methodology: Nutrition; functional genomics; human and animal physiology; molecular cell biology
