Policy, behaviour and education

Smart food choices can impact people’s lives. Choosing foods that are nutrient-dense and low-calorie foods helps promote good health. Education is key to making these choices a habit. Learning about the benefits of smart food choices can empower individuals, societies, and communities to impact human and environmental health.

Dietary habits are significantly influenced by a complex interplay of social, economic, cultural, and psychological factors, leading to a diverse food environment and individual consumption patterns. 

Factors underlying people’s purchasing and eating behaviours include individual income, food costs, culinary customs, personal preferences, beliefs, and geographical and environmental aspects, such as the effects of climate change.

Over the past few decades, the consumption of refined carbohydrates, sweeteners, oils, and animal-based products has increased significantly, while the intake of fruits, vegetables, and legumes has decreased largely due to globalisation, urbanisation, economic development, and the availability of processed foods. As a result, unhealthy dietary patterns have emerged, contributing to malnutrition and changes in population health.

Work Package 7.1 focuses on understanding the determinants and factors underlying food-related consumer behaviour. The study delves into the economic aspects of food choice and management, considering consumers' behaviour and companies' practices and decision processes. 

WP 7.1 aims to broaden the current knowledge of how dietary choices are influenced by social and cultural elements such as beliefs and norms. It also considers psychological factors such as health, positive psychology, and psychosomatics to provide a more comprehensive understanding of eating behaviours and offer more options for reducing eating-related disorders and promoting well-being.

Furthermore, it analyses the nutritional constraints that impact healthy and sustainable diets. The findings will contribute to developing behavioural models that profile and predict consumers' choices, exploring the mechanisms that encourage the adoption of healthy and sustainable diets and consumption patterns.

Work Package 7.2 is centred on behavioural change interventions for sustainable diets in selected settings. This goal is to develop and test strategies to increase the purchase and consumption of healthy and sustainable food, both in supermarkets and alternative food networks, as well as in public canteens and out-of-home settings. 

Therefore, the research activity of WP 7.2 will be carried out in order to co-design and test a set of specific interventions to promote healthy and sustainable eating habits, including reducing food waste. To achieve this, the WP 7.2 team will develop common guidelines and a set of tools for the measurement, monitoring, and evaluation eating and food-related behaviours. These tools will be used to measure the effectiveness of the interventions and make necessary adjustments to achieve the desired outcome. The research aims to engage local users in the co-design and testing the interventions to ensure their feasibility and success in real-world settings.

Work package 7.3 focuses on developing educational and informational tools to encourage healthy and sustainable diets. To accomplish this, there will be a collaborative effort to identify educational needs in schools and analyse current food education practices.

This task will involve creating culturally responsive food education practices tailored to the identified different needs and promoting technology to raise awareness about healthy and sustainable diets and prevent food waste. Additionally, WP 7.3 aims to promote educational paths that encourage a critical approach towards using digital devices to convey body image, to fight eating disorders in adolescent age groups. The ultimate goal is stimulating active participation from different target groups and promoting healthy and sustainable nutritional behaviours.