Summary : To combat the burden of cardiometabolic disease, which constitutes a major public health issue in Europe, it is of crucial importance to develop efficient strategies that target the dietary behaviours of European consumers and improve the food supply. Plant foods are rich sources of a large range of bioactive compounds that beneficially affect our health, particularly by decreasing the risk of cardiometabolic diseases. However, heterogeneity in individuals’ responsiveness to plant food bioactives can obscure associations between dietary intakes and health, hinder the identification of health benefits for specific population groups and limit our understanding of the exact role of the different bioactives.
POSITIVe specifically addresses inter-individual variation in bioavailability and physiological responses to consumption of plant food bioactives in relation to cardiometabolic endpoints. This Action will coordinate a multidisciplinary and multisectorial European network, harness and combine the currently fragmented knowledge and ensure the optimal translation of findings into applications. It will promote the leadership of European research in this active and high-profile research field, provide scientific knowledge to regulatory authorities for a new generation of nutritional recommendations targeted to large population subgroups and foster the competitiveness of the European food industry by underpinning the development of new functional/customized foods.

Main Objectives :

Build an open European scientific network to tackle the question of the inter-individual variation in response to plant food bioactives consumption.

• Identify the main déterminants of the inter-individual variation
• Define strategies to stratify populations into sub-groups
• Identify knowledge gaps, methodological needs and provide a roadmap for future innovative European research
• Foster exchanges between scientists, industry and regulatory authorities to fuel development of innovative applications from scientific findings

Expected Impacts :

 Science :

• Strengthen and structure a large European community to ensure future innovative research on plant bioactives and cardiometabolic health
• Improve evaluation of the health benefits of plant food bioactives taking into account different subgroups of responders
• Train Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in the field and develop their capacity building through exposure to multi-disciplinary and multi-sectorial questions

Industry :

• Provide scientific basis for future innovative spin-off projects
• Support development of new functional/customized foods
• Increase European Agro-food industry competitiveness

Public Health :

• Provide scientific basis to refine dietary recommandations to optimized the health effects of plant foods for all population subgroups
• Help public authorities in refining global strategies regarding nutrition to improve lifelong health and well-being of the European population

POSITIVe COST action summary is available in several EU languages. Click here.