Blonk Consultants is one of the partners in the EU project PROMISS. PROMISS is an international project that aims to turn the challenge of tackling malnutrition in older people into an opportunity to stimulate healthy ageing in the future. The PROMISS consortium consists of a wide range of organisations besides Blonk Consultants, including VU University Amsterdam, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), HAS University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands), TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research), Kellogg’s and Fonterra.

Blonk Consultants is responsible for the sustainability aspect of the project.

Broad approach to tackling malnutrition

The project takes a holistic approach. This means that it includes a wide range of topics, including epidemiology, geriatrics, health, physical activity, microbiomics, consumer behavior and sensory and computer sciences. Blonk Consultants is responsible for sustainability. Ultimately, the project should lead to sustainable and healthy diets for older people and strategies for physical activity to prevent malnutrition and promote healthy ageing.

Sustainability and healthy diets

Within the work package, our efforts are focused on developing sustainable, feasible and (cost) effective diets and strategies for physical activity. A first step in determining the sustainability of diets is to collect environmental data on a selection of European foods in Life Cycle Inventories (LCIs). The environmental impact (carbon footprint, land use and fossil energy consumption) of 93 generic foods selected from the EFSA Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database has been calculated over the entire life cycle, from cultivation to packaging, consumption and final disposal. The criterion for selecting the foods was their contribution to the impact of a European diet for the elderly.

Dataset in Optimeal

The next step will be to add this dataset to Optimeal to enable us to make analyses of healthy sustainable diets. Optimeal is one of the modern technological solutions that can help older people as well as manufacturers of products for the elderly to make healthy choices.

Consortium meeting in Nice

In September the consortium met in Nice, France. Roline Broekema and Paulina Gual represented Blonk Consultants. It was very useful for them to meet other members of the consortium and share the initial results. During the meeting they were able to talk to a number of food companies who are going to develop protein-rich products specifically for older people. Sustainability will be one of the criteria in the product development.

More information about PROMISS

More information

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