Define needs to promote food security and sustainable in different age ranges

Focused on promoting healthy diets, food security and sustainability in different age ranges, Work Package 5.2 aims to ensure that people of any age have equal access to adequate nutrition essential for their health and well-being. 

The primary objective of the package is to verify the adequacy of the nourishment of older adults involving senior membership circles (i.e., church circles, sports circles) and elderly care homes to investigate particular risk factors that may affect nutrition among older adults. The goal is to evaluate and harmonise existing nutritional protocols and raise awareness among older people and their caregivers. 

A further responsibility of WP 5.2 involves assessing the energy needs of adults and senior citizens while evaluating the validity of different predictive equations used to estimate resting energy expenditure or a gold standard, such as wearable metabolic technology or indirect calorimetry combined with accelerometry, in these population groups.

Defining protein requirements changes with advancing age is also central to the package’s tasks. The nutritional characteristics of unconventional protein sources, such as grains, pseudo-grains, pulses, algae, and fungi, will be specifically examined to understand better how protein needs change as people age. New protocols/surveys for evaluating the nutritional status across life stages with attention to maternal-infant dyad in the first 1000 days, adult population, including physically active people and athletes, and free-living older adults, will also be provided. 

The Work Package 5.2 further involves collecting and harmonising existing guidelines and position papers which consider the nutritional and lifestyle factors, the intra/inter-individual variables and the environmental exposures affecting health promotion across different life stages.

The final task of the package includes education and training activities delivered at different levels in connection with Spoke 7 “Policy, Behaviour and Education” to promote models for healthy nutritional schemes addressing academics, healthcare professionals, industries, and the general population.