Nutrition policy snapshots

World Cancer Research Fund International has been analysing nutrition policies in 30 European countries as part of the CO-CREATE project – a EU-funded project involving young people to help reduce overweight and obesity among adolescents.

As part of this work, we have produced a snapshot of the policy landscape in each country, looking at what policies exist, and how well-designed they are.

The country snapshots supplement our new policy index, which examines the strengths and weaknesses of policy design and policy actions in the 30 European countries as a whole.

Read more about each country and download snapshots in English or national languages:

Austria | Belgium | Bulgaria | Croatia | Czech Republic | Denmark | England | Estonia | Finland | France | Germany | Greece | Hungary | Ireland | Italy | Latvia | Lithuania | Malta | Netherlands | Northern Ireland | Norway | Poland | Portugal | Romania | Scotland | Slovakia | Slovenia | Spain | Sweden | Wales

> Download all 30 country snapshots as a bundle (zip, English)

NOURISHING – towards better nutrition policies

We call this the NOURISHING policy index because it is structured around the 10 policy areas of our NOURISHING framework and examines the policy design – ie, what a good policy looks like – in our NOURISHING database of nutrition policy.

Our research showed that 4 areas have mostly moderate policy design and action in all 30 countries:

• nutrition labelling (mostly moderate)
• standards for healthy foods in schools and other public settings (mostly moderate)
• setting nutrient limits or targets for the improvement and reformulation of food products (mostly good)
• policies to inform people on healthy eating (mostly good)

Policy areas consistently rated as poor or fair are:

• restrictions on advertising and marketing of unhealthy foods to young people
• nutrition education and skills eg in schools
• nutrition counselling in healthcare settings

There is insufficient national government action in any of the European countries we looked at on:

• using economic tools to address food affordability and purchase incentives
• ensuring coherence between food supply chains and health
• setting incentives and rules to create a healthy retail and food service environment

Downloads and translations

Visit our CO-CREATE library of resources to download the full profile for each country in the national language and in English, the NOURISHING and MOVING policy briefs, and much more.

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