Description

Diet and nutrition play a key role in health promotion and disease prevention

Profound lifestyle changes have led to the need to consume at least one meal away from home, thus increasing the number of people who frequent commercial services.

It is therefore evident that food, in all its forms, has taken on a growing role in dictating consumption trends and, for this reason, food prepara- tion and services must be adapted to meet the consumer's new nutritional requirements.

According to WHO, planned interventions for public spaces should aim to improve food's nutritional quality and safety (in places like schools, workplaces, health and social-service facilities, etc.); and to ensure that the supply of food products within catering operations, food stores, vending machine, etc. meets dietary guidelines.

In addition, the lines of action identified by the Lombardy Region are oriented towards promoting healthy food choices in public spaces. It is necessary to make people sensitive to the concept of food quality, which involves the welfare of both individuals and society as a whole, along with the environment in which they live.

Hence,

the idea of a project that, through the use of specific technologies, brings about the exploration - with a new slant - of the main scenarios of the distribution/ marketing of food:

local public catering (workplaces, schools, hospitals, self-service restaurants)
spaces equipped with vending machines
high-level catering and
GDO commercial spots.

Objectives

The aim of the project is to offer services that improve consumers' overall food experience, reinforcing their ability to choose food by acting through awareness and education and by guiding them towards appropriate eating habits:

1

Services for catering, self-service restaurants and collective distribution

to adapt to new market demands with more numerous and problematic users. Different technological solutions can be implemented to provide better services to consumers and restaurateurs:

Systems to distribute contextualized information
Systems to identify a consumer's eating habits and "Telepast"
Technology Platform and coaching

2

Services for automatic
distribution
by using the ability to profile users through regional map services, innovative Vending Machines can provide safe and healthy food and drinks, offering educational services and customized information via large, touch-screens.

3

Services for nutritional
education, play and culinary
learning for children and
teenagers
a kitchen set for children can be built, with tools and information to explore the world of cooking. With this kit, one can access the nutritional-education platform where video-recipes and edutainment tools have been developed to help students learn with recreational and fun activities; the focus here is for them to gain greater awareness of their food habits. These same issues can be addressed in practical activities, such as cooking classes and games.

4

Identification and
recognition of food species
the control of raw-material food species is carried out for commercial and health reasons. The scene of a fish market can be shown and explored, with a recognition system using real-time PCR.