WiseFood aims at developing smart digital applications that will empower citizens to make healthier and more sustainable food choices. It will leverage state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and tools, combining the factual knowledge representation capacity of Knowledge Graphs with the natural language understanding, generation, and reasoning abilities of Large Language Models. These will allow us to build novel tools that democratize access to reliable food-related information and go beyond the current levels of personalization and contextualization offered by existing food recommenders. The developed applications will be user-friendly and integrate seamlessly into daily life, not requiring specialized IT skills or devices. Our goal is to bridge the divide between knowledge, intention, and action with end-to-end intelligent solutions. A human-in-the-loop approach with food domain experts, including nutritionists, will be applied to ensure alignment with national policies and guidelines. Living Labs implementing a multi-actor approach are foreseen to co-create the envisioned solutions. These will take place in three different countries, Ireland, Hungary, and Slovenia, with the latter being an already established and operational short food supply chain Living Lab. The outcomes of WiseFood will enhance the overall food ecosystem, by promoting healthier dietary habits, reducing the ecological footprint of food consumption, and fostering a culture of well-informed and eco-conscious citizens.

Over 30% of EU citizens at vulnerable stages and situations in life are at increased risk to transgress from healthy weight to overweight and further to obesity. Though many interventions to tackle obesity have been proposed, they have rarely been effective. The aim of HealthyW8 is to advance the efficacy of current and future efforts and investments in obesity prevention initiatives across Europe. Most interventions suffer from not adapting to personal context (e.g. socioeconomic aspects, host-biological factors, environment, dietary preferences, fitness level etc.), focus only on diet or physical activity alone, do especially overlook emotional aspects, and fail to engage and motivate the user. Thus, initiatives on obesity prevention in policy and practice are often of marginal impact. HealthyW8 will address these shortcomings by iteratively developing, together with stakeholders, a digital-based healthy lifestyle recommender for evidence-based, tailored interventions and tools including a human digital twin to bridge the gap between science, societal actors and stakeholders (e.g. healthcare professionals, food industries, policymakers) and EU citizens. The targeted populations are those undergoing transitions, i.e. schoolchildren (5-10 y, and their parents), young adults (18-25 y) and the elderly (>65 y). In the mid-term, we estimate that with 200,000 HealthyW8 users, we will prevent 10,000 obesity cases/y. In the long run, the impact will be maximized through adopting the project’s proposed methodology, platform and tools by as many EU institutions and entities as possible. HealthyW8 is a highly experienced, synergistic and complementary consortium that will built on a previously developed digital dietary app (LIFANA) and draw on transdisciplinary research in pan-EU multicentre pilots and long-term randomized control trials to achieve its overarching objective of increasing impact of current and future obesity prevention interventions and policies in the EU.

PROMISS (PRevention Of Malnutrition In Senior Subjects in the EU) is a multi-country project aiming to turn the challenge of tackling malnutrition in community-dwelling older persons into an opportunity for healthy ageing for the future. The PROMISS consortium contains worldwide expertise in epidemiology, clinical trials, geriatrics, nutrition, physical activity, microbiomics, as well as in behaviour, consumer, sensory and computer sciences. It builds on strong collaborations with food industry and SMEs to strengthen innovation of the European agri-food sector and their market position. Existing data from scientifically well-established prospective aging cohorts and national nutritional surveys from Europe and ‘third countries’ will be combined with new data from short- and long-term intervention studies in older persons at risk. Its holistic approach will provide insight in the causality of the links between diet, physical activity, appetite and malnutrition and underlying pathways, thereby providing the necessary evidence to develop optimal, sustainable and evidence-based dietary and physical activity strategies to prevent malnutrition and enhance active and healthy aging. PROMISS will also deliver food concepts and products as well as persuasive technology to support adherence to these strategies. The dietary and physical activity strategies and food products will be specifically developed with older user involvement to meet the needs and fit the preferences of older consumers. In close collaboration with stakeholders, PROMISS will translate these strategies into practical recommendations to guide policy and health professionals at EU- and Member States level. Dissemination and implementation takes place through strong dissemination partners operating on an European level and linked to national networks across Member States. PROMISS promises prevention of malnutrition, additional healthy life years and a strengthening of EU’s food industry

HDHL Food4Health addresses the intertwined challenges of food and diet-related Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) and Climate Change by fostering collaboration and aligning research efforts across food, health, and environment areas. Through a participatory approach, HDHL Food4Health widens the HDHL network and organises co-creation workshops to identify common Research & Innovation (R&I) priorities. It aims to overcome siloed approaches by coordinating activities among government, academia, industry, and citizens, enhancing societal impact at national and regional levels. Leveraging its connections with researchers, policymakers, and other relevant stakeholders, HDHL supports its members in contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by aligning food and health systems. The initiative facilitates joint funding calls and implements transdisciplinary research actions to maximise impact and address urgent societal challenges. By promoting collaboration and knowledge exchange, HDHL Food4Health aims to catalyse a shift towards healthier and more sustainable food systems, ultimately contributing to improved public health and environmental sustainability. The main objective of HDHL Food4Health is to align common R&I priorities among funding programmes by identifying research and policy needs, whilst continuing to align both with the Horizon Europe (HE) Partnerships and the needs identified by the European Commission.