Dated: July 19 th 2006

We are what we eat, but how do we know what we eat? Food companies put a myriad of additives and different ingredients into our food products, each one in its own right may not be harmful to the population but in combination with other substances from our diverse eating habits, there may be a risk of high levels of exposure to harmful substances.

By analysing large samples of the population’s eating habits including all of the additives and chemicals in their diet, we get a better picture of how our health is affected by what we eat.

Up to now, this information has been gathered from piecemeal data from many institutions. CREMe has teamed up with another Irish company, Wirefile Health Informatics to enable complete online, on-demand data collection and analysis for the very first time. This new partnership arms regulators and researchers with a powerful and accurate tool to assess what the effect of the food we eat is having on our lives.

For example, many of the products which we use for cooking contain varying quantities of salt. When you combine this with the salt we add to our food combined with the salt contained in processed foods, it turns out that the amount of salt that the population consumes is far too high. The consequences for public health of high salt intake are devastating and include: high blood pressure, stroke, osteoporosis (bone demineralisation), stomach cancer and kidney disease.

Also, of key importance today for public health is obesity. With CREMe™ and Wirefile™, analysts can gather up to date and detailed information on the consumption habits of the population, this information is then combined with the amount of saturated fat, nutrients, carbohydrates and calories in the food products. The result of this analysis is a complete and accurate distribution of the population exposure to these ingredients. The following questions can now be answered by regulators and researchers, for example: what exactly is the consumption of the highest 5% of consumers of saturated fat? Are they at risk?

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) recently purchased CREMe™ Software’s flagship product CREMe™ 2.0 to enable them to get a much clearer picture of the Irish population’s consumption of Salt including detailed information on high end consumers who are most at risk. The FSAI also uses CREMe™ to monitor population exposure to other potentially harmful chemicals such as pesticides, contaminants, saturated fat, artificial flavourings and sweeteners.

Now, the government regulator has access to more accurate information in order to ensure the implementation of policies which will affect public health and where appropriate will be able to advise consumers on what to eat based on more accurate data.

CREMe™ Software is the only software solution globally capable of processing the vast amounts of data required for this analysis. CREMe™ has achieved this by using the same technology that the world’s largest banks use to calculate exposure and risk.

Peoples eating habits change regularly, the breakdown of what people are eating today is quite different to what people were eating even five years ago. This makes the collection of up to date population consumption data essential for this work. The partnership with Wirefile™ now allows much easier collection and assimilation of data on population consumption habits. This data is acquired efficiently using their advanced online and mobile phone data collection system – V-Clinic. The partnership is a natural fit for these two Irish companies when you consider the companies’ relative strengths.

CREMe™’s strength lies in their science and technology for analysing, calculating, correlating and finding key drivers of population exposure using their scientifically validated software and expertise.

Cronan McNamara, CEO of CREMe™ Software states –“Our clients can now design studies and collect data more efficiently using Wirefile™’s technology. This data can then be analysed, managed and shared efficiently and easily using CREMe™’s scientifically validated safety assessment models. This all leads to more up to date data sets, more accurate analysis by researchers, government departments and companies and ultimately improved consumer health.”

Wirefile™’s strength lies in efficiently collecting and presenting the population consumption data in an appropriate format for CREMe™ to number crunch.

Carl Kiernan, CEO of Wirefile™ states – “We believe that working together with CREMe™ Software will bring major benefits for our clients. CREMe™ Software’s cutting edge tools for analysing large and complex datasets is a perfect match for Wirefile V-Clinic™ which enables the efficient capture of study data both online and through mobile phones.
Our clients will now be able to design studies, collect data and complete the analysis and reporting stage more efficiently than ever before – all  though their browser!”

About CREMe™ Software

CREMe™’s Mission is to help regulators, safety authorities, food, personal care product and chemical manufacturers and researchers to rapidly and reliably evaluate exposure, consumption and safety levels of consumers.

CREMe™ provides scientifically validated web software solution and consultancy services to manage data and calculate population statistics and exposure assessments to chemicals, additives, nutrients, contaminants in food and cosmetics chemicals (colouring, preservatives, etc), personal care products and related areas. CREMe™ emerged from over five years of research carried our in Trinity College Dublin under leading nutritionist Prof. Mike Gibney.

The online CREMe™ system allows collaboration of geographically separated groups working on joint projects.

For more information, see www.cremesoftware.com.
Contact:
Cronan McNamara projects.
cmcnamara@cremesoftware.com
+353 1 896 8541



About Wirefile™

Wirefile™ Health Informatics is a specialist provider of data collection systems to the clinical trials sector with a focus on nutrition and lifestyle studies. Wirefile™ provides technology and services that enable the efficient collection and analysis of trial data via the internet and mobile phones.
Currently, most research in the areas of nutrition and lifestyle continues to be done using traditional paper based methods. Paper based methods are extremely expensive and labour intensive when 
compared with the Wirefile™ solutions.

Wirefile™’s flagship system, V-Clinic, is an online, on-demand data collection service.
Wirefile™ also provides solutions to online clinic solutions to Dieticians and lifestyle products to the mobile content industry.

For more information, see www.wirefile.com.
Contact:
Carl Kiernan
cbk@wirefile.com
+353 1 479 3293