Table 1 Comparison of fields identified by FAHRE thematic areas experts, by FAHRE country reports and by Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) interim report.

Food production and products

Food safety

Production field: design of food (components...), its preparation (processes...), its manufacturing and also home cooking matters linked to health and disease, interface between industry and the scientific sector.

Diet and food production:

Establish reliable data on consumer food preferences and acceptance in order to develop new food products and to redesign how foods are produced.

Enable redesign and optimisation of food processing and packaging.

Foods must always be safe and should be produced in a sustainable way.

Regulation, claims, and food policy for health

Consumer behaviour and what influences it

Policy field: regulation (labeling, salt, sugar and fat contents, claims...) and consumers, which will have an impact on diet and therefore on health. It could also focus on programmes more economically oriented, linked to marketing, participation, public expression and access.

Lifestyle: Consumer behaviour and food choice.

Understanding of consumer behaviour with regard to food and also to raise consumer understanding of healthy foods and food consumption patterns.

Measuring food purchase and consumption behaviour taking into account cultural differences, and subsequently, developing reliable models of consumer choice processes.

Effective communication strategies with consumers need to be developed to induce behavioural change directed to improving consumer health and social responsibility.

Population surveys causes and control

Health policy for food, nutrition, diet and obesity

Population field: at human and population level, epidemiologic approaches (including biological, social and psychological determinants) and observational and interventional research on behaviours that can explain eating disorders leading to chronic diseases.

Horizontal issues: Mapping food cultures in Europe; research infrastructures (databases, biobanks, food tables); methods, including foresight, to evaluate national or regional programmes; principles for cross-border funding of research.

Food causing disease - excess, imbalance, sensitivity

Nutrition micro-elements, malnutrition, gene interactions,

Biomedical field: nutrition and dietary research relating to molecular and clinical aspects, in the pathways and causes of disease, and the mechanisms at different periods of the life course.

It could also include food safety, both toxicology and biological.

Chronic diseases: preventing food-related, chronic diseases and increasing the quality of life:

1) understanding of brain function in relation to diet;

2) the effects of diet-gut interaction on intestinal and immune functions;

3) the link between diet and metabolic function (obesity and associated metabolic disorders).