Bruce German, Ph.D.
- University of California, Davis
- Director, Foods for Health Institute
Research Interests: Dr. Bruce German's laboratory group focuses on research seeking to understand how to improve foods and their ability to deliver improved health. The model being used to pave the way toward improving the health benefits of foods is milk, which evolved to make healthy mammals healthier. Milk is the only biomaterial that has evolved under the Darwinian selective pressure for the specific and sole purpose of nourishing growing mammals. Survival of offspring exerted a strong selective pressure on the biochemical evolution of lactation. This process has led to the appearance of new compositional properties of milk that promote health, strength, and ultimately survival. This evolutionary logic is the basis of the research program to discover physical, functional and nutritional properties of milk components.
Dr. German is also interested in personalized health and research is developing the means to understand how individual human lipid metabolism responds to the lipid composition of diets. Each person has slightly different responses to diet based on their own genetics, metabolism and nutrition status. One of the goals of the laboratory research is to understand the molecular basis of these differences, how to recognize them, and design food strategies to complement them. We are working on analyses to allow individuals to monitor how their body reacts to various foods and to modify their consumption to maintain good health.
Education: German received his Ph.D. from Cornell University.