UPEI student wins national Morgan medal for dietetic research

Roxanne Laughlin, a Foods and Nutrition honours student in the UPEI Faculty of Science, has won a national award for her passion and commitment to research. The Canadian Foundation for Dietetic Research presented her with the Morgan medal during the Dietitians of Canada national conference in Charlottetown.

Roxanne has been exploring the possible health benefits of eating cranberries. Cranberries are an important dietary source of polyphenols, or antioxidants, and researchers in the Bioactives Research Interdisciplinary Opportunities (BRIO) lab at UPEI are studying whether cranberry added to the diet can reduce the effects cardiovascular disease or strokes.

Supervised by Dr. Kathy Gottschall-Pass, Roxanne worked with a strain of rats that have a genetic predisposition for cardiovascular disease and obesity. She examined their antioxidant levels after feeding them diets that included various levels of cholesterol and cranberry. Her work has added important information to the BRIO team's overall findings about the role of cranberries and other fruits and vegetables in preventing or reducing the occurrence of chronic diseases.

Roxanne won an Undergraduate Summer Research Award for this work from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council last summer. She says this valuable first-hand experience as a researcher has brought nutrition, biology and biochemistry truly alive for her.

'I now understand, in a more concrete way than ever before, just how clearly diet affects the body and, ultimately, health,' she says.

Roxanne is entering her fourth year of her Bachelor of Science Honours degree in Foods and Nutrition. She is originally from Toronto but now makes her home in Stratford, PEI.

Photo: Roxanne Laughlin and Dr. Kathy Gottschall-Pass