Grasping the full picture of healthy and sustainable nutrition using optimisation
Join us at Food Matters Live 2017
The challenge of making the global production and consumption of food more sustainable is becoming increasingly urgent. The growing world population and the even faster growing demand for environmentally intensive products is leading to the destruction of local and global natural capital. Natural areas are being reclaimed, agricultural land and water resources are being degraded, and the climate is changing. At the same time, a large proportion of the global population eat unhealthy diets. Some have too little food and are malnourished, while a growing number eat too much. This situation is unhealthy and quite simply unsustainable.
Making the global food production and consumption system healthier and more sustainable presents a major challenge to governments, businesses and consumers alike. We see that they are looking for ways to tackle this problem and define the contours of a healthy and sustainable society. The use of optimisation can help to define healthy and sustainable nutrition.
How to define sustainable & healthy diets?
The answer lies ultimately in finding the right balance between the sustainability and the health of foods. We see that companies, governments and civil society organisations are looking for ways to define the contours of a healthy and sustainable society. However, defining healthy and sustainable food patterns is complex and should be based on a systematic investigation and sound data. Optimisation techniques can help to obtain a greater understanding of how to improve diets with minimum changes to eating habits. To find the right balance between sustainability and healthy food we’ve built Optimeal, an optimisation tool that enables to investigate this issue and come up with comprehensive solutions. This tool defines healthy and sustainable food patterns based on a systematic investigation and sound environmental and nutritional data. The optimisation engine uses either linear programming (LP) or quadratic programming (QP) to find the optimal solution.Right balance between impact and nutrition
This optimisation approach can help governments and civil society organisations to define sustainable diets, which help to formulate policies and foster action in society. Furthermore, it can help companies to determine the position of certain products in a sustainable and healthy diet and define a clear strategy, for instance to decrease the environmental impact or make certain products more nutritious.This means it is possible for all those different stakeholders to come up with evidence-based and realistic solutions to tackle one of the biggest global challenges of today and head for a sustainable, healthy and prosperous future.
Learn more at Food Matters Live 2017 in London
Curious about the topic sustainable diets & optimisation? Join us at Food Matters Live 2017 in London (21-23 November). Roline Broekema will give a presentation on this topic during the session ‘Future food consumption: innovation in sustainable diets’.Food Matters Live is an event bringing together the food and drink industry, retailers, foodservice providers, government and those working in nutrition, to enable collaboration and innovation to support a sustainable food landscape for the future. The event is free to attend.
Read more about Food Matters Live 2017.
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