The Eurecat technology centre has taken part in an international study involving 250 families with school-age children in Spain and Turkey to promote the Mediterranean diet and foster healthy and sustainable habits through digital resources, educational materials and introducing healthy plant-based products.
Eurecat’s Nutrition and Health Unit, supported by the Centre for Research in Agri-Food Economics and Development (CREDA), led the nutritional intervention study in Spain which was conducted mainly in Reus and also included families from Tarragona and Barcelona.
To carry out the study, the European SwitchToHealthy project has furnished families with “educational and digital resources including mobile apps for meal planning, learning through play tools and training activities tailored to various age groups,” says Lorena Calderón, a researcher in Eurecat’s Nutrition and Health Unit.
In lockstep, healthy snacks have been devised with agri-food businesses to “encourage eating nibbles made from plant-based ingredients adapted to children’s tastes and nutritional requirements, thus meeting general dietary recommendations and replacing between-meal consumption of processed products high in sugars and animal fats,” adds Noemi Boqué, SwitchToHealthy’s scientific coordinator and a researcher in Eurecat’s Nutrition and Health Unit.
The shared goal has been “to raise awareness of the significance of the Mediterranean diet for health and the environment,” points out Sara Gómez, director of the Nutrition and Health Unit.
Participating families have had regular visits and personalised advice to improve their eating habits and increase their intake of vegetables, seasonal fruit and pulses which are standard in the Mediterranean diet.
The study has also led to positive changes in anthropometric parameters such as Body Mass Index, especially for families who have benefited from a combination of the educational inputs provided by the project.
The SWITCHtoHEALTHY consortium, funded through the PRIMA call with the support of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, has been coordinated by the Italian firm ENCO SRL and involved 18 partners from Italy, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey including universities, small and medium-sized enterprises, multinationals, government agencies and research and technology centres.