I.Family Final Conference to Share Results of 5-year Study into Children’s Diets and Lifestyles

Study follows ten years of research with the largest ever European cohort of children in eight countries

The diets and lifestyles of European families, how they affect life-long health and what can be done to tackle problems such as obesity, will be the focus of the I.Family Study’s final conference in Brussels in February 2017.

This EC-funded project was designed to investigate the determinants of food choice, lifestyle and health in European children, adolescents and their parents. It follows the well-known IDEFICS Study, which enrolled 16,000 children across Europe – the largest research study on diet and lifestyle-related diseases in children. The I.Family Study has examined these children in their ‘tween’ and teenage years, studying their dietary patterns, physical activity, local environments, family relationships, friendship networks and genetic factors.

“The large number of families we’ve studied, over nearly a decade now, puts us in a fantastic position to understand how different factors affect children’s healthy development, particularly in relation to obesity,” says Professor Wolfgang Ahrens from the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology and Coordinator of the I.Family Study.

“However, it’s vital that what we’ve learned is converted into policies and incorporated into daily life so that it can have a real impact on young people’s lifespans.  So our final conference is aimed at those key individuals with a practical, professional or policy interest in supporting and improving children’s health and lifestyles – both in Europe and beyond.”

The I.Family Study Final Conference – which takes place at the International Press Centre in Brussels on Thursday 9^th February, 2017 – will provide insights around food, health and lifestyles, supporting innovative practice and evidence-based policies – including the major challenge of obesity prevention and management

For further details about the conference please visit our website at www.ifamilystudy.eu

ENDS/Contacts and Notes follow

Media contact for I.Family Study –Charlotte Reid/Rhonda Smith +44 (0) 1264 326427/+44 (0) 7887 714957. charlotte@minervacomms.net  or rhonda@minervacomms.net

Notes for Editors:

1. The I.Family Study is an EC funded project under Framework 7 of the KBBE programme running from March 2012 to February 2017. It has 17 partners, working across 11 countries and with cohorts in 8 European countries – Germany, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Cyprus, Estonia, Spain and Belgium.
2. The study has two strategic objectives:
   (1) Understand the interplay between barriers against and drivers towards healthy food choice;
   (2) Develop and disseminate strategies to induce changes that promote healthy dietary behaviour in European consumers especially adolescents and their parents
3. The I.Family Study is re-assessing the families first engaged with the Identification and Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-Induced Health Effects in Children and Infants Study (IDEFICS), when children were below 10 years of age, now that they move into adolescence – the ‘tween’ years – identifying those families that have adopted a healthy approach to food and eating habits and those that have not. I. Family is adopting a holistic approach by also investigating the biological, behavioural, social and environmental factors that drive dietary behaviour as children journey towards adulthood.