Creating a healthy food environment

Does the fact that half of all Dutch people are overweight concern you? And that this leads to an increase in chronic diseases, such as diabetes, and a higher risk of developing severe symptoms if they become infected with Covid-19? And do you want to do something about large health differences across different groups, based on their educational level and socio-economic status? The 20-week minor ‘Creating a Healthy Food Environment’, will help you contribute to a healthier world.

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Minor at a glance

In this video the client, a lecturer and a student tell you more about their experiences during the minor Creating a healthy food environment.

About the program

This minor focuses on creating healthier food environments. Over the course of 20 weeks, this programme challenges you to develop, apply and/or evaluate a strategy to do so. This includes topics like:

how can marketing aimed at children for unhealthy products be banned;
designing a supermarket (webshop) strategy to help consumers make healthy choices;
introducing healthy school lunches in primary schools or healthy choices in hospitals or other healthcare facilities.

You will gather information on issues such as nutrition and health, food environment, legislation and roles of the relevant stakeholders. And you will dive into the opinions about nutrition and health of the various relevant stakeholders (government, food sector, social organisations). On that basis, you will form your individual critical opinion. The 20-week programme includes: interdisciplinary project work, guest lectures by government experts, the food sector, social organisations and knowledge institutions.

Learning goals

You will learn how to:

gather reliable information;
based on that information, adopt a critical, nuanced and substantiated position on the causes of unhealthy food environments;
develop an effective strategy that leads to a healthier food environment, allowing consumers to eat more healthily;
take into account the interests of the various relevant stakeholders, such as the food industry, government, consumers and NGOs.

Entry requirements

completed HBO propaedeutic year and at least 40 credits from the 2nd year.
basic knowledge of nutrition and health is recommended but not mandatory.
any specific deficiencies can be discussed in advance and additional teaching material will be made available.

Application

Want to sign up for the Minor Creating a healthy food environment?

Here you find more information about the application procedure.