Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Promoting dietary shifts and sustainable diet valorising food products
Coordinator
Enhancement of food quality and shelf life within the catering system (public canteens and fast-food chains) as well as the distribution system (e.g., retails) to improve products and consumption models offered also taking advantage from smart sensor-based procedures and new strategies targeting "inclusion and awareness” of the consumer (in connection with Spoke 2 and 7) and nutritional information. Activities start from analysis of overall food quality of mass food catering (e.g., public canteens), main fast-food chains and the large-scale distribution to redirect towards sustainable diet/menus/products and personalised/ precision nutrition (in connection with Spoke 1, 2 and 5).
Implemented dietary programmes redirecting menus and dietary offers with lower environmental impact, implemented nutritional quality and safety, and increased affordability of national collective catering (M24)
Improvement of private label products strategy to better target nutritional needs and environmental and social sustainability (M30)
Modern lifestyles, globalization and COVID-19 pandemic have shifted dietary habits towards highly processed, hypercaloric, sugar-, fat- and, salt-enriched “junk” fast food, paving the way to the consequences of chronic metabolically-related non-communicable disorders. Tailored strategies based on educated information must reduce extra health costs associated with poor dietary habits, with the aim of saving and/or improving health and ameliorating quality of life and survival.
UniBA will help the adoption of healthy diets and lifestyles by national adults, implementing a lunch menu which will be easy-to-make, easy-to-cook or ready-to-use, easy-to-carry-out, based on ingredient locally and easy-to-find, eco-friendly, nutritionally adequate and economically sustainable. Microbial fermentation by selected autochthonous or commercial microorganisms will be considered to improve sensorial, nutritional, healthy and shelf-life properties of the vegetables. New services based on applications for mobile phone or similar devices will be realized to helps, in real life, final consumers towards healthy and sustainable dietary behavior. Activities will include the analysis of habitual eating patterns across consumers. The recipes for meal will promote health through local and traditional vegetables, legumes, nuts, fruits, olive oil, and seafood by using the national Food Composition Table to estimate the total energy and composition.
We expect the creation of a dietary database combining highly nutritional, healthy, sustainable, low-processed ingredients (cereals/pseudocereals/legumes; mediterranean vegetables and/or by-products; fibers and MUFA sources; aromatic plants) which should be chosen and combined by people for their easy-to-make, easy-to-cook or ready-to-use, easy-to-carry-out, eco-friendly, nutritionally adequate, and economically sustainable lunch. In addition, to help people to adapt their diet to sustainable, and nutritionally adequate foods, for preserving their health and/or reduce the risk of chronic metabolic related non-communicable disorders, UniBA will realize an application for mobile device helping the transition to sustainable and healthy dietary behavior.
