Diet scenarios
IMPROVING EU DIETS THROUGH CONSUMER SIDE INTERVENTIONS
Considerable challenges have been overcome in order to bridge the gap between micro-level nutrition and macro-level economic research especially regarding modelling attempts in the SUSFANS toolbox. As part of the SUSFANS project, nutritionists have investigated current EU diets at population level based on individuals’ intakes of a wide array of products. Despite valid concerns when averaging intake recommendations across individuals they came up with national level healthy diet recommendations that can be addressed by large-scale macro models (D2.2). To operationalize the toolbox some major challenges linked to definition of food consumption had to be resolved to the extent possible in the context of the SUSFANS project (see discussion on methods for more detail).
A growing number of research deals with potential and implemented interventions targeted at changing consumer food purchases and intake (D10.3). Not all instruments are equally suitable to be implemented in macroeconomic models. The range of potential instruments and the selection for scenario implementation are reflected in the following section. Figure 10 provides an overview of the linkages between targets defined by nutrition research, instruments suggested by consumer research and their macro model representations and implementation possibilities.