CHANCE · Low cost technologies and traditional ingredients for the production of affordable, nutritionally correct foods improving health in population groups at risk of poverty

According to 2007 Eurostat statistics, there is a robust need to better understanding the nutritional existing barriers to healthy nutrition of 79 million EU-27 citizens at-risk-of-poverty. These European subclusters and ethnic populations have in common low purchasing power, limited education and the highest risk of diet-related diseases due to sub-optimal nutrition. CHANCE project will i) define an innovative strategy based on a socio-economic study of the composition of the most significant EU populations at-risk-of-poverty and ii) verify the relative existing nutritional deficiency via a holistic approach ensured by metabonomics investigations correlating the non-healthy diet to real metabolism alterations. CHANCE intends to adopt a new multidisciplinary approach, leading to nutritional strategies for the prevention of malnutrition in population groups at risk of poverty. CHANCE aims at considering a new health value-added diet as a whole by developing food products which could act in concert. The synergic collaboration of nutritionists, food chemists, economists and technologists allow a robust strategy to by pass all barriers to healthy nutrition by the lab-scale development of affordable but nutritionally-rich food products, new packaging and portioning. The R&D activities planned in the enlarged European Union will facilitate a proactive collaboration among food research centers and food processing and packaging SMEs that will be further transferred with the generated foreground. During the processing of food products, nutrient content and stability will be assessed, then the whole technology process will get the influential support of a CEN Workshop Agreement, drafted within CEN (the European Committee for Standardization) in order to help ensuring consumers with a controlled quality. CHANCE nutritional and educational strategies will produce guidelines for European Public Health policy dealing with the prevention of malnutrition in such population groups. The European Food Information Council will ensure that the progress and results from CHANCE will be communicated and disseminated widely.