Together for a healthier food environment for children and adolescents in Europe

Best-ReMaP: Joint Action on Implementation of Validated Best Practices on Nutrition

With the Best-ReMaP project, 24 European countries teamed up to work towards a healthier food offer for children and adolescents. To this end, effective measures (Best practices) from the areas of reformulation (Re), marketing (Ma) and procurement (P), that have proven of value in individual countries, were to be implemented elsewhere. The focus was on: 

• Reformulation of food
• Marketing of foods to children
• Public procurement of food  

As part of the project, the Institute of Nutritional Behaviour at the MRI participated in the development of a standardized European monitoring system for the reformulation of processed foods.

Monitoring for the reformulation of processed foods

For the monitoring, the ingredients of processed products were recorded in 18 countries and possible effects of national measures to reduce salt, sugar and fat were examined. Product categories considered were bread products, breakfast cereals, meat products, fresh dairy products and desserts, and soft drinks. The MRI provided results for Germany from its product monitoring. In the end, the largely harmonised methodology allowed the development of a process for Europe-wide investigation and comparison of trends in food reformulation. This work is being continued in the new Joint Action Prevent Non-Communicable Diseases  to eventually help identify successful reformulation measures in terms of reduced intakes of sugar, fat, and salt in the population.
 

New EU-wide database for branded food and beverages

The newly established EU-wide database FABLE , in which food information is continuously collected, aims to facilitate access to the data of the national product monitorings for researchers and policymakers. This will make it easier to compare measures for reformulating processed foods at European level.