Nutrition and Physical Activity: Commission perspective

Philippe Roux will provide the Commission’s perspective on the importance of good nutrition and physical activity, and an overview of its recent strategy on nutrition, obesity and overweight adopted in the form of a White Paper in May 2007. This encompasses a wide field of topics including the Commission’s work to revise Community legislation in the field of food labelling and health claims as well as the relevance of regional and transport policy, and the importance of recent actions at EU level in sports, agriculture and research policy.

The presentation will also cover the range of actions related to developing a strong multi-stakeholder partnerships framework across Europe, and why these are important. This includes, at EU level, the Platform for action on diet, physical activity and health and the new High Level Group in Nutrition and Physical Activity. He will set out the Commission’s vision for action at the local level and the role the Commission can play to develop this.

Finally he will discuss the application and potential of strong multi-stakeholder partnerships as a solution to change population dietary behaviours, as has been seen by the success of some Member States in tackle high salt consumption.