Volunteers sought to demonstrate the efficacy of the Mediterranean diet in attaining a healthy weight and habits

The Eurecat technology centre’s Reus site has announced a call to find 80 teenagers who would like to take part in the MED4Youthresearch project. It is designed to demonstrate that a Mediterranean diet featuring produce such as pomegranates, chickpeas, hummus, nuts and sourdough bread is effective in helping young people to attain a healthy weight and healthy habits.

Volunteers must be aged between 14 and 17; have parental or legal guardian consent to participate; be obese or overweight; have access to a mobile phone, tablet or computer with an internet connection, and not have chronic diseases or be allergic or intolerant to nuts, pomegranate, bread or chickpeas.

Omics technologies will be harnessed as part of the research which “will allow us to learn more about how the Mediterranean diet has a healthy effect on the body by analysing the bacterial populations and metabolites in the gut,” says Antoni Caimari, the project’s principal investigator and director of Eurecat’s Biotechnology Division.

The teenage volunteers will be monitored by nutrition and health experts to help them stick to the nutritional guidelines laid down. Together with their legal guardians, they will also get online support throughout the study via a web app which provides healthy recipes and tips to inspire them to achieve a healthy weight and healthy habits.

Anyone who would like to take part can register as a volunteer or make enquiries by emailing estudis@eurecat.org or calling 636 944 723.

The MED4Youth project is conducting the first nutritional intervention clinical study of its kind with a total of 240 teenagers from three Mediterranean countries at the same time: Spain, Italy and Portugal.

The study in Spain is led by Eurecat’s Biotechnology Division together with the Nutrition and Health technology unit and the Centre for Omic Sciences (COS), a joint R&D&I unit made up of experts from Eurecat and the Rovira i Virgili University (URV).

The MED4Youth project consortium, coordinated by the Eurecat technology centre, also includes the University of Parma (Italy), which is leading the study in Italy, the University of Coïmbra (Portugal), which is heading it in Portugal, Shikma Field Crops (Israel), the Scientific Food Center (Jordan) and Panishop-Novapan (Spain). The project is additionally partnered by the Cooperativa Agrícola de la Selva del Camp (COSELVA) which will supply the nuts to the participants.

The project comes under the PRIMA programme which is backed by the European Union, Catalonia Trade & Investment, the Spanish Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), the Israeli Innovation Agency, the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), the Jordanian Scientific Research Support Fund and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).