Projects

Food Security Education & Empowerment for Dietitians

Food insecurity remains a persistent and widespread issue across Europe, affecting millions of individuals and families. In response to this critical problem, we have developed an ambitious initiative designed to empower dietitians with the knowledge and resources needed to combat food insecurity effectively.

The main aim of HEALTH UP! is to provide VET trainers and VET centres with tools to understand and identify indicators of eating disorders among their students, encouraging eating disorder prevention through early identification and the implementation in the VET centre of preventive activities that encourage healthier habits among students. It aims to educate VET teachers on eating disorders, from a formal perspective but also a practical perspective of prevention in the classroom.

Programme: ERASMUS + Action Type: Cooperation partnerships in vocational education and training (KA220-VET)
EFAD role: Partner
Lead: Mediterraneo Culinary Center

Empowering Healthy Lifestyle Behaviour

Personalised Intervention Portfolios to Prevent and Control Obesity during Vulnerable Stages of Life

Project Timeline: 2023-2028

EFAD’s Role: EFAD and ENDietS add knowledge in nutrition/dietetics, create and review suitable and sustainable recipe content considering food culture, and act a part in the dissemination of the project through a variety of activities.

Funds: HORIZON-HLTH-2022-STAYHLTH-01-two-stage

EFAD Representatives: Marianna Kalliostra (Project Officer), Ezgi Kolay (Project Officer)

Dis4Food, an ERASMUS+ funded project, aspires to ensure that dietitians will become part of the digital disruption in diet and food. The project brings together food data experts from the Laboratory of Food Chemistry & Analysis of the Agricultural University of Athens (AUA) and dietitians from the European Federation of the Associations of Dietitians (EFAD) to join forces in equipping dietitians with essential digital skills in food data literacy.

Lead: Agricultural University of Athens, Greece
EFAD role: Partner
EFAD representatives: Katarzyna Janiszewska (KJ), Marianna Kalliostra (MK), Elwira Gliwska (EG)
Timeline: 01/04/2024 – 31/03/2026

WiseFood aims at developing smart digital applications that will empower citizens to make healthier and more sustainable food choices. It will leverage state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and tools, combining the factual knowledge representation capacity of Knowledge Graphs with the natural language understanding, generation, and reasoning abilities of Large Language Models. These will allow us to build novel tools that democratize access to reliable food-related information and go beyond the current levels of personalisation and contextualization offered by existing food recommenders. We aim at developing the following tools:

• FoodScholar: This tool will automatically extract information from authoritative sources (e.g., scientific articles, national guides), making it more easily accessible to users (both professionals and non-experts).
• RecipeWrangler: This tool will associate digital recipes with a nutritional profile and sustainability information, while also modifying recipes to increase their score in these dimensions.
• FoodChat: This tool will provide personalised and contextualised recommendations to users towards helping them shift to healthier and more sustainable diets

Lead: Athena Research and Innovation Center, Greece
EFAD role: Partner
Timeline: 01/01/2025 – 31/12/2027

Increasing Healthy Hydration awareness has become a key element of the work of EFAD since 2015. EFAD in collaboration with experts on healthy hydration has launched the European Healthy Hydration Awareness Campaign (EuHHAC).

Project aims are:

• deliver tools to integrate hydration in dietitians practice
• develop e-learning on hydration
• dissemination of EUHHAC messages

Funds: Supported by Danone Research
EFAD representative: Pauline Douglas (Project Manager), Ezgi Kolay (Project Officer)

Translating science-based recommendations for a healthy breakfast into an educational toolkit for dietitians and consumers.

Funds: Unrestricted educational grant from Cereal Partners Worldwide

Representatives: , Project Manager Katarzyna Janiszewska and Project Officer Ezgi Melody Kolay

Project aims are:

• Review and validate existing communication CPW materials for breakfast education
• Optimise the features and functionality of the MS nutrition tool to meet the needs of dietitians to educate patients about a healthy breakfast
• Develop a simple intuitive tool based on the IBRI breakfast score that consumers can use to build a healthy breakfast by themselves

Aligning interprofessional education and collaboration in practice, using promising regional experiences for international exchange

Funds: ERASMUS
Consortium: 7 partners from Austria, Belgium, Finland and The Netherlands, organised in regional duo’s of a HEI plus a rehabilitation center
EFADs role: associate partner (no direct funds)
Representative: Ingrid Aerts

Digital personalized interventions for healthy NUTrition and physical activity for Seniors

Funds: EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme European Joint Programming Initiative “A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life” (JPI HDHL) and of the ERA NET Cofund ERA HDHL
EFADs role: collaborator (no direct funds), co-authorship of reviews; dissemination and Cooperation with ESDN Older Adults, ESDN Sport and Physical Activity
Representative: Amalia Tsagari

PROtein enriched MEDiterranean diet to combat undernutrition and promote healthy neuroCOGnitive ageing in older Adults

Funds: EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, European Joint Programming Initiative “A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life” (JPI HDHL) and of the ERA NET Cofund ERA HDHL
EFADs role: collaborator (no direct funds) and cooperation with ESDN Older Adults
Representatives: Harriët Jager-Wittenaar, Stacey Jones, Elizabeth Archer, Robert Speer

The European Federation of the Associations of Dietitians (EFAD), supported by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC), undertook a member survey into current awareness and attitudes towards coffee and health.

Gap resolutIon in sAfety, NuTritional, alLergenicity and Environmental assessments to promote Alternative Protein utilization and the dietary Shift

GIANT LEAPS is accelerating the transition from animal-based to alternative dietary proteins to work towards a safe, health-promoting and sustainable food system.

Funds: HORIZON-CL6-2021-FARM2FORK-01-12

EFADs role: member of stakeholder board

EFAD representative: Annelies Rotteveel

Project finished

The scientific and technological mission of PROMISS was to conduct ground breaking research to contribute to the prevention of malnutrition in community-dwelling older adults and to support active and healthy ageing. PROMISS aimed to better understand and ultimately prevent protein energy malnutrition in seniors. It integrated all relevant scientific disciplines to ensure excellent cross-disciplinary expertise and exchange of knowledge.

EFADs role: partner, WP9 dissemination
EFAD representative: Réka Kegyes (Project Officer, PO), Marianna Kalliostra (Assistant)