The EU-funded FOODCLIC project aims to contribute to urban food environments that make healthy and sustainable food available, affordable and attractive to all citizens, including deprived and vulnerable groups.

Europe’s urban areas face significant challenges to ensure the availability and consumption of healthy, affordable, safe and sustainably produced food. Such challenges converge within local food environments, but are often neglected by public planners. Promising initiatives taken by municipalities to change the architecture of food choice often fail to become embedded in the wider policy context and to reach deprived and vulnerable groups. Key factors responsible for this are: siloed ways of working and fragmentation of knowledge on facilitators and barriers related to food system transformation. These factors hinder the development and implementation of integrated urban food policies.

Five-year project FOODCLIC (2022-2027), aims to contribute to urban food environments that make healthy and sustainable food available, affordable and attractive to all citizens, including deprived and vulnerable groups. The project will do so through creating strong science-policy-practice interfaces across eight European city-regions (45 towns and cities). The backbone of such Interfaces will be provided by Food Policy Networks, which will manage real-world experimental Living Labs to build a policy-relevant evidence-base through learning-in-action. Activities will be informed by an innovative conceptual framework (the CLIC), which emphasises four desired outcomes of food system integration: sustainability co-benefits, spatial linkages, social inclusion and sectoral connectivities. Capacity-building and direct support for intensive multi-stakeholder engagement (including deprived and vulnerable groups) will enable policy actors and urban planners across partner city-regions to develop continuously evolving integrated urban food policies and render planning frameworks food-sensitive.Description

The project objective is to examine whether 12 months of provision of a carbohydrate-reduced high-protein (CRHP) diet as compared to dietary counseling to follow a CRHP diet or provision of a conventional diabetes (CD) diet can reduce medication and improve blood glucose control and key risk factors for metabolic and cardiovascular disease in patients with T2D. Morning, lunch and dinner meals are delivered to the participants via a mealbox solution.
In the project, AU-FOOD will measure the eating behavioural and well-being related effects in order to clarify if the CRHP diet and mealbox solution holistically can be interpreted as a beneficial solution in treatment of type-2-diabetes.
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The PhD project focuses on understanding the cultural and personal drivers of accepting sustainable foods and the role of nutritional and sensory quality in such acceptance. Dairy alternatives will be used as a case, and therefore the project will, besides providing concrete knowledge on the nutritional value and acceptance of such products, also, serve as a model to clarify individual drivers and barriers toward accepting sustainable foods. Additionally, the present project will investigate the environmental impact of these products and their role in the Great Food Transformation.Description

The current PhD project takes the innovative approach of suggesting that improved interoception and exteroception can be used as a strategy to promote healthy eating behavior. It is believed that paying attention to sensory food experiences in combination with state information from the body, including pleasure, can serve as an effective tool for promoting healthier eating behavior.
The project will progress over three phases. Phase 1 includes studies of individual differences in interoceptive and exteroceptive capabilities. Phase 2, strategies to boost interoception and exteroception. Phase 3 will develop recommendations using interoceptiion and exteroception to better control desires for highly palatable foods.
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