A healthy diet can lay the foundations of healthy development and prevent malnutrition.
An unhealthy dietary pattern, along with limited physical activity account for a significant proportion of deaths and poor quality of life worldwide.
Healthy eating in childhood and adolescence is important for proper growth and development and to prevent various health conditions
A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and wholegrains and poor of sugar and saturated fats can prolong life and prevent most non-communicable diseases, notably diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and obesity. It can even lead to higher educational attainments!
Developing a healthy dietary pattern from an early age is crucial!
Most of European countries have set specific guidelines tailor-made for their population taking into account apart from the evidence-based research on nutrition and health, the cultural particularities and local traditions.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO) has selected the available dietary guidelines in Europe. These resources can be found here.
The national dietary guidelines for infancy, childhood and adolescence of the countries were the Dr.PED-Chef project are summarized here: