The basis of Europe's eating behaviour

In 2005, the European Commission launched the European Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health to improve overall nutrition and help tackle nutrition-related diseases like obesity. The project I.FAMILY (Determinants of eating behaviour in European children, adolescents and their parents) is supporting this initiative. The consortium will provide relevant and targeted scientific data on which the platform can base concrete actions that lead to measurable effects.

I.FAMILY has two strategic objectives. The first targets understanding the interplay between barriers to and drivers of food choices and how they affect the health of children and adolescents. The second is to develop and disseminate effective strategies, empowering European consumers to change dietary behaviours as necessary.

The first project year mainly focused on specifying and preparing a research protocol for following up on the 'Identification and prevention of dietary- and lifestyle-induced health effects in children and infants' (IDEFICS) children's cohort. To realise a feasible and coherent research protocol, work was centred on existing core components, incorporating new components to address project-specific research questions, and ensuring components were applicable to, and acceptable for, the specific target groups (children, adolescents and adults). All instruments, examination protocols and corresponding standard operating procedures were translated into the national languages of the cohort centres.

Following this phase, the next 18 months were dedicated to data collection in 8 recruitment centres and providing databases and data management routines on the central data server set up for I.FAMILY. The follow-up survey of the IDEFICS/I.FAMILY cohort was completed in May/June 2014. In total, 9 555 children and 7 794 parents from 6 135 families took part.

To date, two methodological papers have been published: 'Clustering of unhealthy food around German schools and its influence on dietary behaviour in schoolchildren: A pilot study' and 'Usual energy and macronutrient intakes in 2 to 9 year old European children'. Another 26 scientific articles are currently being prepared.

Ongoing project work will remain focused on overcoming barriers to healthy nutrition by empowering European consumers, prioritising intervention targets and providing evidence-based intervention strategies to policy-players and key stakeholder groups. I.FAMILY is on course to advance a better understanding of the discrepancy between an optimal diet and the actual dietary pattern of many Europeans. This is key to reducing the overall burden of disease brought on by poor nutrition together with a lack of physical activity.