INSERM Exhibition : Health on our plate
Nutrition plays an increasingly central role in public health. With this in mind, Inserm has put together an exhibition entitled: “Health on our plate”
This rich and dynamic exhibition has been created by Inserm under de coordination of Samia Sayah, with the support of Dr. Mathilde Touvier (scientific referent), and experts from the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team (Equipe de Recherche en Epidémiologie Nutritionnelle CRESS-EREN, Inserm/Inrae/Cnam/Université Sorbonne Paris Nord/Université Paris Cité/Santé Publique France) and the NACRe network (Nutrition, physical activity and cancer research.
With thematic panels and graphics accessible to all audiences, Inserm’s main objective is to bring this exhibition to all public institutions, such as schools, universities and hospitals, helping to raise public awareness of nutrition issues by illustrating the existing links between nutrition and health, and the importance of public health nutrition policies on a national and international scale.
The exhibition is composed by 13 panels that are divided in 4 main cells: the first seeks to define a healthy diet by explaining the importance of each of the 4 main food groups (proteins, lipids, dietary fiber and carbohydrates), then it explains the benefits of adopting regular physical activity in daily life as a complement to a balanced diet, and finally it provides an overview of French eating habits. Using statistical examples of the links between nutrition and cancer or cardiovascular diseases, it explains in a second section how healthy nutritional habits are fundamental to good health.
The third part of the exhibition leads us to ask ourselves: “What influences our food choices?” and looks at the determinants of nutrition, whether they are individual, collective and/or cultural. It also presents the Nutri-score and other public health tools, and allows us to reflect on the social and environmental issues surrounding food. It also looks at the impact of food processing and additives on health.
Finally, the fourth part of the exhibition makes the link between research and public health policies. Starting with the NutriNet-Santé cohort (CRESS-EREN), which today brings together over 179,000 citizens who are contributing to advancement of knowledge on nutrition and health. It was developed to study the relationship between nutrition and health and the determinants of dietary behavior, as well as to monitor nutritional trends in the population and assess the impact of public health campaigns and initiatives, such as the French National Nutrition and Health Program (PNNS).
In this context, the exhibition also shows the importance of citizen engagement and the power of their initiatives such as the one launched in 2022 by consumer associations seeking to make it compulsory for food products to carry a logo such as the Nutri-Score.
To round things off, Inserm has dedicated a panel to “fake news on our plate”, which clarifies the myths surrounding certain foods and eating habits, urging readers to take a critical look at the information circulating on social media, and to always seek out reliable sources of information.
Photo credit: Inserm, https://www.inserm.fr/culture-scientifique/exposition-la-sante-dans-notre-assiette/#:~:text=Avec%20l’exposition%20La%20sant%C3%A9,certaines%20maladies%20et%20am%C3%A9liorer%20notre
