The key to health promotion and disease prevention in the 21st century is to establish an environment that supports positive health behaviour and healthy lifestyle. HELENA (Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescence) is a wide-ranging project designed to understand and effectively enhance nutritional and lifestyle habits of adolescents in Europe. Funded by the European Commission, it will study 13-16 year-olds using common methodology across 10 countries, leading ultimately to the development of a lifestyle education programme.

The reason why

Many non-communicable diseases are thought to have their origins in childhood or adolescence. However, the relationship between these diseases and the adolescent lifestyle and attitudes, physiology, genetics and environmental factors is complex and not well understood.

Adolescence is a crucial period in life and implies changes that affect nutritional needs and habits. Many healthy (or unhealthy) life-long habits begin there. Growth and body composition changes are rapid, there is an increase in social and psychological pressures and health related messages do not appear to be effective.

HELENA overall objectives

Harmonise methods to assess adolescent’s health

HELENA project proposes an integrated approach to the above- mentioned problem, a number of multi-centre studies looking at a wide range of inter-relating factors: dietary intake, nutrition knowledge, eating attitudes, food choices and preferences, body composition, plasma lipids and metabolic profile, vitamin status, immune function related to nutritional status, physical activity and fitness and genotype. The last is to enable the researchers to look at the relationships between an individual’s genetic predisposition and the environment. For example by investigating the susceptibility of obese individuals to develop other diseases associated with obesity, like diabetes or coronary heart disease.

The participating partners aim to develop and harmonise methods to assess lifestyle habits and attitudes across the participating centres so that parameters for nutritional status, dietary quality and physical fitness of adolescents are common to all. This will allow adolescent health in different European countries to be easily compared.

Improve lifestyle education programmes

Through the collection of data on dietary and physical activity patterns, nutritional status and information on knowledge, attitudes, food choice and preferences, a picture of the health of the European adolescent will emerge. This will be coupled with additional data on regional, cultural, social, genetic and gender differences and similarities across Europe to facilitate the development of a lifestyle education programme.

One novel aspect of HELENA is the use of the ‘fuzzy logic’ approach in a computer-tailored intervention, in order to write individual advice for optimising the usual eating habits of adolescents. The dietary assessment method needed to develop this tool will be validated using the cross-sectional dietary intake data. Its efficacy across the diverse European population will be assessed for the first time.

Improve identification of adolescents at risk

An additional part of the project is to identify those who are at risk of eating disorders, abnormal blood lipid profiles, obesity, Type 2 diabetes or a shortage of certain vitamins and minerals, such as iron deficiency anaemia, since early identification will help to reduce clinical manifestations in later life. This will include looking for genetic links.

Health promoting foods

Industrial partners will be able to develop some food products with positive health attributes for adolescents, which are also attractive in terms of their sensory characteristics and packaging. One objective is to establish what adolescents perceive to be ‘traditional’ foods and whether these could easily be re-established into the European adolescent’s diet.

Top level of expertise

Co-ordinator of the project, Professor Luis Moreno from the Universidad de Zaragoza in Spain who has brought together a total of 25 partners, considers that the basis of the project is the previous experiences of all the groups: “Participants in the HELENA project come from the academic and the industrial areas. The group is a multidisciplinary one, and each partner is already working at a top level in their corresponding area of expertise”.

References

For more information about the HELENA project, please consult: http://www.helenastudy.com

The HELENA study has received research funding from the European Community’s Sixth RTD Framework Programme (Contract FOOD-CT-2005-007034). The content of this notice reflects only the author’s views and the Community is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

FOOD TODAY 06/2005