Unibo Team Leader:Dott. Mario Mazzocchi, Dip. di Scienze Statistiche «Paolo Fortunati» - STAT
Obesity has been estimated to cost the EU some €70 billion annually through health care costs and lost productivity, and additionally overconsumption of salt, sugar and saturated fats and underconsumption
of fruit and vegetables cause almost 70,000 premature deaths annually in the UK alone. Member states have initiated a variety of policy interventions to encourage healthy eating, including prohibitions on advertising certain foods to children, promotion of fruit and vegetable
consumption, nutrition labelling, dialogue with food industry to improve food product composition and regulation of school meals and public sector canteens to ensure healthy food offerings. Rarely have these been evaluated in a systematic manner. The EATWELL project will gather benchmark data on healthy eating interventions in Member States and review existing evaluations of the effectiveness of interventions using a 3 stage procedure: (1) The impact of the intervention on consumer attitudes, consumer behaviour and diets; (2) The impact of the change in diets on obesity and health; (3) The value attached by society to these changes, measured in life years gained, cost savings and QALYs. Where evaluations have been inadequate, EATWELL will gather secondary
data and analyse them using models mainly from the psychology and economics disciplines.
Particular attention will be paid to lessons that can be learned from the private sector that are transferable to the healthy eating campaigns in the public sector. Through consumer surveys and workshops with other stakeholders, EATWELL will assess the acceptability of the range of
potential interventions. Armed with scientific quantitative evaluations of policy interventions and their acceptability to stakeholders, EATWELL will recommend most appropriate interventions for Member States and the EU, provide a one-stop guide to methods and measures in interventions
evaluation, and outline data collection priorities for the future.
Coordinator
THE UNIVERSITY OF READING (UK)
Other participants
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM-UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
- Dip. di Scienze Statistiche «Paolo Fortunati» - STAT
- Resp. Scientifico: Dott. Mario Mazzocchi
AARHUS UNIVERSITET (Denmark)
UNIVERSITEIT GENT (Belgium)
ISTITUTO NAZIONALE DI RICERCA PER GLI ALIMENTI E LA NUTRIZIONE (Italy)
THE JAGELLONIAN UNIVERSITY MEDICAL COLLEGE (Poland)
KRAFT FOODS R&D INC (USA)
AISBL EUROPEAN FOOD INFORMATION COUNCIL AISBL (EU)
EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNICATIONS AGENCIES SCRL (EU)
Start date 14/04/2009
End date 14/10/2012
Duration 42 months
Project cost 3.176.439 Euro
Project Funding 2.511.852 Euro
Subprogramme Area Measures aimed at promoting healthy eating habits
Contract type Collaborative project (Small or medium-scale focused research project)