Lifelong nutrition

“A healthy diet is human health promoting and disease preventing, and safeguarding of planetary health by providing adequacy, without excess, of nutrients from foods that are nutritious and healthy and avoiding the introduction of health-harming substances through all stages of the value chain. Healthy diets must be affordable and culturally acceptable. They must progressively change towards originating from sustainable production and processing systems that do not adversely affect local and regional ecologies.” UN Food Systems Summit, 2021

For food to be considered safe, it must be free from harmful contaminants, bacteria, viruses, parasites, and chemical substances. Adequate nutrition, on the other hand, entails the consumption of the appropriate amounts of nutrients and energy to fulfil the diverse needs of individuals.

Eating a balanced and healthy diet can enhance cognitive function, improve mental health, and prevent chronic diseases such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, arthritis, and some cancers. If sustainable, nutrition can also help reduce environmental pressure and impact, thus limiting the deterioration of ecosystems and biodiversity loss.

Work Package 5.1 aims to identify the Italian geographical areas at higher risk of over- and under-nutrition and select strategic partners to meet and educate the at-risk population. It will also analyse different Italian population groups’ food consumption, lifestyle, and biochemical/genetic parameters along the lifecycle. 

It will also develop an ONFOODS cohort to assess target populations' nutritional status, eating behaviour, physical activity, and lifestyle. The goal is to promote quality diets and healthy and sustainable eating habits nationally.

Work Package 5.2 promotes healthy nutrition, food security and sustainability across all life stages by examining the adequacy of nutrition among the aged population, determining the energy demands of adults and senior citizens, defining new protocols for evaluating the nutritional status of adults, consolidating and standardising guidelines and position papers, and providing education and training, at different levels, on healthy dietary patterns.

Work Package 5.3 aims to identify critical variables influencing adherence to the Mediterranean diet in Italy, targeting children, adolescents, adults, and free-living older adults. This package research team will detect individual and environmental barriers affecting healthful dietary habits and develop innovative Mediterranean sustainable nutrition models. 

The new models will be presented using various dissemination and communication techniques focusing on family nutrition, school children, and adolescents. Finally, the team will provide algorithms for designing personalised diets for pregnant women and children during the first 1000 days to ensure long-term weight-maintenance benefits.

Work Package 5.4 Work provides protocols and schemes for collecting data and metadata associated with biomarkers of dietary habits, conducting studies in selected cohorts to validate biomarkers of dietary adherence, and organising a multi-centre infrastructure for biological sample collection and identification standards, a multicentre infrastructure for data analysis, a clinical multicentre infrastructure for population recruitment and relationships with ethics committees, dedicated to the identification and validation of food biomarkers.