Healthy and Sustainable Diets Round table | 07.03.2019 | European Parliament, Brussels

Jan de Vries participated on behalf of HGF  in the Round Table entitled “Embracing Healthy and Sustainable Dietary Switches for You and the Planet’s Health!”, which took place on:

Thursday 7 March 2019, 11:00-12:30, at the European Parliament, Brussels  – room ASP 3H1. 

Aims of the Meeting have been:

1.Raise awareness of the simple, realistic and sustainable dietary switches everyone can make to their diets for better health and for the planet’s well-being, highlighting the important role wholegrain plays in this dietary model.

2 Build up a constructive dialogue between consumers, policy-makers, food industry and retailers on how to best motivate and create enabling environments to nudge consumers into adopting small, yet impactful low environmental impact dietary changes, for a healthy life for present and future generations.

3. Spotlight on Italy: how to increase wholegrain consumption in markets consuming lowest amount of whole grain to improve public health– elucidating the importance of the local context, culinary traditions and habits.

The event drew on the recent EAT-Lancet Commission report.

Francesco Branca presented (by skype) a short summary of the EAT-Lancet Report and had a clear message what WHO is aiming to achieve. He indicated that WHO will pay attention to whole grains in the upcoming time. This provides Healthgrain Forum and the Whole Grain Initiative opportunities to stand up as “the helping hands” to get whole grains on the agenda of WHO.

Sandro Dernini presented the role of the original Mediterranean Diet (that was used in the 50-ies and 60-ies) in a sustainable and healthy diet.

Then the MEP allowed a discussion between Francesco Branca and Sandro Dernini on the sustainable character of the Mediterranean Diet and how important it was to promote that diet against the ever increasing influence of the large food industries.

For HGF Jan de Vries was able to present the needs to create a transition from refined grains to whole grains in the perspectives of a sustainable and healthy diet. This transition nicely fits in the recommendations of the EAT-Lancet Commission.

Antonelli Pezzini presented his view on needs to shift to healthy and sustainable diets in the EU.

Find here the given presentation during the Round Table Discussion by Jan de Vries/HGF:

[pdf-embedder url=”https://healthgrain.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/190306-HGF-Presentation-Brussels.pdf” title=”190306 HGF Presentation Brussels”]