An academic and cardiologist at one of the UK's leading Russell Group universities have been working on a way of making conventional foods more healthy for the heart. Their attention has been on beetroot and beetroot juice which is known to be very good for the heart. In particular, beetroot contains very high levels of inorganic nitrate (nitrogen-based compound) that is known to be very good at lowering blood pressure and increasing blood flow. Amongst the positive effects demonstrated, it has been shown to help the heart and body function better and increase the amount of time before a person gets tired when they are exercising. If there was a way of helping the population consume more inorganic nitrate, it could help reduce the risk of heart problems and also contribute to helping keep people more active in their daily lives. The above team has isolated the healthy nitrate from beetroot and they have done scientific studies to better understand how inorganic nitrate affects our hearts and bodies. The challenge now, and motivation for this grant funding application, is to understand how nitrate can be formulated into a recipe that is suitable to introduce, or fortify, conventional foods with the beneficial and safe doses of inorganic nitrate. The aspiration is to create a cheap food additive that can be put into commonly consumed foods, this would then make it possible to lower the blood pressure and increase exercise tolerance at a population level. This additive could have a profound impact on one of the biggest forms of ill health and death i.e. heart disease. The enclosed feasibility study enables the above academic and clinical team to work with experts in food science to develop a nitrate additive that is suitable for use in common foods. The team will then produce a small batch of food (expected to be a cereal based product) that has been fortified with the nitrate additive. This fortified cereal product will then be consumed by a small group of volunteers to determine if the food has the desired effect on the body and heart function. This project provides the above team with vital proof of concept information on the proposed additive that will then make it possible to raise investment in the future to develop and regulate the additive for formal use in foods.