Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives

Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives
A Presidential Initiative 

A Three Year Summary Report

Safe and healthy foods, along with wise food choices and smart eating habits, are essential to the quality of life for individuals, their families and overall community health.

•    Diet-related chronic diseases – diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer, obesity and asthma – consume 75 percent of the $1.4 trillion U.S. healthcare budget, according to Department of Health and Human Services statistics.  

•    The cost of food-borne illness caused by E. coli and other microbial contaminants increases the overall healthcare cost to society by up to an additional $14 billion.

•    Demographic shifts in the population resulting in socio and cultural changes in the market place have increasing and multiple effects as food relates to the health of diverse cultural groups.

The ultimate long-term solution to reduce disease and promote health and wellness is prevention, through knowledge creation, dissemination, and science-based policy analysis.

The Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives initiative draws expertise and core strengths in research, education and engagement, including Extension and all forms of outreach, from across the colleges and units of the University of Minnesota.  The initiative integrates activities within four priority areas to address a number critical health issues.  The priority areas utilize and advance knowledge to:

o    Integrate agriculture, food science, nutrition, social sciences and medicine to promote healthy lives;

o    Prevent diet-related chronic diseases and obesity through diet, physical activity and human behavior;

o    Enhance food safety at all stages, from farm to table; and 

o    Promote public awareness and inform public policy.

Public discussion about foods and health can eventually transition from a focus about the damaging effects of food consumption to a focus on how foods can and should be used to promote healthful lives – a transition that reflects the primary goal of the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives initiative.  Through this initiative, the University of Minnesota will integrate all phases of discovery and education -- plant breeding, horticultural crop harvesting and food processing, food safety, nutrition and dietary research, epidemiology, treatment of diet-related chronic disease, nutrition education, behavior, economics, consumer choice and lifestyle, disease prevention, public policy and public information and education. 

The University of Minnesota is a national leader uniquely positioned to advance knowledge and deliver cutting-edge education on the interplay between food and health:  To treat and prevent diet-related chronic disease and to assure safer foods for families and communities.