Axis 3 - Nutrition and Society

Axis 3 - Nutrition and Society

The themes and objectives of Axis 3 are:

Physical environment

  • Study the natural or built environments as well as physical access to good quality foods at a provincial level and in different living environments, like in childcare centres as well as schools and institutions.

Economic environment

  • Identify the types of food to target as part of public health strategies to help consumers maximise the nutritional quality of their food purchases while minimizing their expenses.
  • Study the impacts of the availability terms of supplies at the point of purchase in order to identify the risk factors, but also the levers of intervention in the economic environment of supply.

Political and legal environment

  • Understand how public policies, laws and regulations shape our diet.
  • Study the policies that support innovation initiatives from food companies, the legal framework of the market entry of their products, the execution of the right to food and the commercial release allowing physical access and the economic benefits, for companies and the society.
  • Study the impact of public policy instruments in regard to purchasing behaviour, which will simultaneously allow evaluating existing approaches, but also testing the effectiveness and the potential of public policy scenarios.

Sociocultural environment

  • Characterise the extent of the phenomenon of disinformation in nutrition in a numerical context.
  • Study the issues related to food literacy and media literacy to identify the most vulnerable populations to disinformation in nutrition.
  • Develop robust analysis tools of credibility of information in nutrition present on social media and support health professionals and the population in making informed decisions regarding nutrition. 
  • Reflect on the sense of social practice in nutrition and its various forms; a reflection that could allow bringing nutrition closer to society. 

Nutritional epidemiology

  • Study the relationship between diet and health in our population and examine how all environmental factors influence this association.
  • Study the nutritional and environmental factors associated with social inequalities in health.