Experts agree that meeting climate change mitigation targets as articulated by the EU Green Deal will only be possible through a just transition to healthy diets produced by sustainable food systems (i.e., organic and pesticide-free agriculture) – the impetus for the EU’s ‘Farm to Fork’ Strategy and the prioritisation of One Health approaches.

FEAST aims to advance the state of the art in research and innovation by bringing together different disciplines across the food system and, importantly, underpinning food actors’ behavioural dimensions, which is often missing in food system solutions.

There are four key objectives:

• Objective 1: Identify, understand and measure the barriers and facilitators that influence the dietary behaviour of different groups (particularly vulnerable groups in Europe), accounting for geographical, socio-economic, behavioural, gender and cultural differences

• Objective 2: To co-create (ideation, design and testing) innovative and effective tools, programmes and strategies, including social innovations, in collaboration with key stakeholders in Europe that will enable consumers to make informed food choices that promote the self-management of healthier and more sustainable dietary behaviours and lifestyles.

• Objective 3: To empower individuals to lead healthier lives by adopting healthier and more sustainable dietary behaviours, choices and lifestyles through evidence-based strategies and tools that address all food system actors at the level of Member States, EU and wider international community.

• Objective 4: To boost the adoption of food and health policy interventions that aim to drive the transition to healthier and more sustainable diets by all stakeholders within the food system by using co-design and scientific testing of communication strategies, and associated monitoring approaches, that could be used by policymakers.

FEAST is also committed to ensuring that the transition is just and equitable – vulnerable groups and those facing health inequalities will be front and centre in our project to ensure their needs are met and that food systems are augmented so that all of Europe’s citizens can benefit from healthier and more sustainably produced diets.

FEAST is a European research project funded by grant nr. 101060536 of the European Union. The research consortium is coordinated by the University of Heidelberg.

Sciensano is leading WP3 of FEAST together with University College Cork on mapping and monitoring factors that shape food environments. As part of WP3 the Business Impact Assessment on Obesity and environmental Sustainability was implemented in Belgium, Ireland and Portugal. The Belgian results can be found below. For each company included a scorecard was designed to compare them with the best in sector and provide recommendations to improve their commitments.

More info about the FEAST project [2]