Overweight and obesity are among the major health problems in all European countries. Their incidence has been steadily increasing since the early 1980s and currently, in the majority of Member States, more than 50% of the adult population is overweight or obese. Even moderate levels of adiposity (slightly overweight) significantly increase the risks of developing non-communicable diseases particularly type‐2 diabetes. But even modest weight loss (5‐10%) can produce significant improvement in health outcomes.
The HealthBread project, a two year European project (FP7) whose starting point derived from the results obtained from a previous project called HEALTHGRAIN, aims at “producing health promoting breads of high eating quality”. The HealthBread project is coordinated by TNO (The Netherlands) and involves 17 participants, including Open Fields, from five European countries. Starting from the development of innovative raw materials and their characterization, HealthBread will create innovative, healthier and attractive bread products (wholegrain breads and wholegrain based bread with the preferred taste of white bread) and will make them available on the shelf. More details about the HealthBread project can be found here.
On 29th and 30th of October, the project kick off meeting took place in Zeist (The Netherlands) where TNO brought together all the partners to define the first operational phases of the project.