Dr. Clara Mehlhose

Clara Mehlhose studied equine business at the Nürtingen-Geißlingen University of applied science. She then moved to Göttingen. Here she completed her Master's degree in agricultural sciences with a focus on agribusiness. For her Master's thesis, she immersed herself in the research field of consumer neuroscience and was so fascinated by it that she also wrote her doctorate on it. She wrote her doctoral thesis entitled "Applying Mobile Consumer Neuroscience for Food Marketing - the Special Case of fNIRS" at the Chair of Marketing for Food and Agricultural Products. After a stopover in the Department of Product Quality of Animal Products (Prof. Mörlein) and as a development professor at the Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences and the German Institute of Food Technologies (DIL), Ms Mehlhose has been back at the Chair as a PostDoc since February 2023. She is enthusiastic about innovative nutrition systems and deals with consumer behavior in the area of health, sustainability & alternative proteins. She favors the use of novel consumer research methods and real-life experiments.

Research focus:

• Consumer behavior related to health/sustainability
• Alternative Proteins, Cellular Agriculture
• Consumer Neuroscience
• Food marketing (e.g. labelling)



Expertise:

• Real-life experiments
• Innovative methods (fNIRS, Eye-Tracking, VR)
• Public Health Nutrition



Research projects:

Communities on Food Consumer Science (COMFOCUS) (until 02/2025)
COMFOCUS brings together, integrates on European scale, and opens up key national and regional research infrastructures in the field of food consumer science to all European researchers. COMFOCUS will provide the academic and private research community with easy virtual and transnational access to high quality services and resources. These are needed to harmonize and professionalize the European food consumer science community and to advance it beyond its current level of fragmentation.
To the Project
Circular and inclusive utilisation of alternative proteins in the mediterranean value chains (CIPROMED) (05/2023-04/2026)
CIPROMED aims to propose alternative protein sources for the Mediterranean food and feed value chain. Particularly, the objective of this PRIMA project is the integration of insect farming and microalgae cultivation in the Mediterranean supply chains, together with the management and valorisation of agri-industrial side-streams, as well as their transformation and fermentative bioconversion into valuable resources. The recovery of ingredients that are based on these natural resource-based substances will be performed through applying cascades of processes enabling the sequential extraction and fermentation of alternative ingredients. The suitability of the new protein ingredients in prototypes of food and feed, will be demonstrated in order to provide validated food and feed products, assured by a systemic LCA-based sustainability assessment. To achieve these goals, CIPROMED aims to adjust novel protein production to the unique Mediterranean conditions, creating a new, socio-economically feasible and environmentally sustainable alternative protein production system located in Mediterranean countries.
To the Project
ZERN = Zukunft der Ernährung in Niedersachsen (06/2024 – 2029)
ZERN is a research network of the University of Göttingen, the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover and the German Institute of Food Technologies (DIL) in Quakenbrück, which aims to support the transformation of the agricultural and food system in Lower Saxony, which is under increasing pressure to adapt. Aspects such as animal welfare and sustainability must be given greater consideration in agricultural production in the future. The findings from the research network should enable the sustainable production, processing and marketing of food.
To the Project (German)



Selected publikations:

• Kühl, S., Schäfer, A., Kircher, C., Mehlhose, C. (2024): Beyond the cow: Consumer perceptions and information impact on acceptance of precision fermentation-produced cheese in Germany. Future Foods, 10, 100411. DOI: 10.1016/j.fufo.2024.100411
• Mehlhose, C., Risius, A. (2023): Effects of immediate and distant health consequences: different types of health warning messages on sweets affect the purchase probability. BMC Public Health 23, 1892. DOI: 10.1186/s12889-023-16760-y
• Schütz, A., Kühl, S., Busch, G., Mehlhose, C. (2023): Making animal welfare labelling more transparent – The potential of different information types from simple text to highly immersive stable tours via VR glasses. Journal of Agriculture and Food Research, Volume 14, 100712, ISSN 2666-1543, DOI: 10.1016/j.jafr.2023.100712.



Teaching:

• Empirical Methods: Consumer Behavior and Market research (M.Sc.) (since 2023)
• Marketing for food and agricultural products (B.Sc.) (since 2023)