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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Nutr.
Sec. Food Policy and Economics
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1458531
This article is part of the Research Topic Food-Based Dietary Guidelines View all articles

Risk-Benefit Assessment of Foods and its Role to Inform Policy Decisions: Outcome of an International Workshop

Provisionally accepted
Constanza De Matteu Monteiro Constanza De Matteu Monteiro 1*Jeanne-Marie Membre Jeanne-Marie Membre 2Morten Poulsen Morten Poulsen 1Sofie T. Thomsen Sofie T. Thomsen 1Sara M. Pires Sara M. Pires 1
  • 1 Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
  • 2 INRAE, Nantes, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Policy decisions in public health require consideration and evaluation of trade-offs for which transparency and sciencetific-based evidence isare needed. Improvement of decision-support tools is essential to help guide food policy decisions that promote healthy diets and meet the challenges of food systems without compromising food security, food safety, and sovereignty.Risk-benefit assessment of foods (RBA) is an established methodological approach designed to inform policy decisions within the area of nutrition and food safety. Despite methodological developments, translation of RBA findings into policies is still limited. In this context, a stakeholder -workshop held in May 2023 gathered RBArisk-benefit assessment experts and food regulators from Europe to identify the challenges, obstacles and opportunities in using evidence generated through RBAs to inform food policy decisions. A structured process was implemented to collect their views through online surveys, breakout group discussions, and plenary discussions. As a secondary objective, food regulators' views on other approaches for holistic risk assessment fit for food systems analysis were also explored. This paper summarizes the main findings of the workshop and discusses policy implications and future perspectives to improve the area of RBA and its role in food policymaking.

    Keywords: Risk-benefit assessment, food policy, decision-making, Health Impact Assessment, holistic approaches

    Received: 04 Jul 2024; Accepted: 05 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 De Matteu Monteiro, Membre, Poulsen, Thomsen and Pires. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Constanza De Matteu Monteiro, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

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