EURRECA: development of tools to improve the alignment of micronutrient recommendations

Abstract

Approaches through which reference values for micronutrients are derived, as well as the reference values themselves, vary considerably across countries. Harmonisation is needed to improve nutrition policy and public health strategies. The EURRECA (EURopean micronutrient RECommendations Aligned, http://www.eurreca.org) Network of Excellence is developing generic tools for systematically establishing and updating micronutrient reference values or recommendations. Different types of instruments (including best practice guidelines, interlinked web pages, online databases and decision trees) have been identified. The first set of instruments is for training purposes and includes mainly interactive digital learning materials. The second set of instruments comprises collection and interlinkage of diverse information sources that have widely varying contents and purposes. In general, these sources are collections of existing information. The purpose of the majority of these information sources is to provide guidance on best practice for use in a wider scientific community or for users and stakeholders of reference values. The third set of instruments includes decision trees and frameworks. The purpose of these tools is to guide non-scientists in decision making based on scientific evidence. This platform of instruments will, in particular in Central and Eastern European countries, contribute to future capacity-building development in nutrition. The use of these tools by the scientific community, the European Food Safety Authority, bodies responsible for setting national nutrient requirements and others should ultimately help to align nutrient-based recommendations across Europe. Therefore, EURRECA can contribute towards nutrition policy development and public health strategies.

The genomics of micronutrient requirements

“…Such recommendations serve as a basis for regulating national and/or regional nutrition policies, which considers average intake. However, no standard approach exists for deriving micronutrient recommendations (Sheffer and Lewis-Taylor 2008) (Ashwell et al 2008;Pijls et al 2009;Matthys et al 2010Matthys et al , 2011Van't Veer et al 2013).…”

EURRECA—Estimating Zinc Requirements for Deriving Dietary Reference Values

“…One of the initial activities in the EURRECA process was to establish the most robust methodology of assessing zinc intake and status ( (Matthys et al, 2010) and activity 3 in (Dhonukshe-Rutten et al, 2013)). The accurate determination of dietary micronutrient intake is notoriously problematic.…”

“…Zinc was selected as a priority micronutrient for EURRECA, because the prevalence of inadequate zinc intakes was thought to be high among all population groups, and the public health concern is considerable. In addition, new scientific evidence has recently become available that demonstrates a large heterogeneity among current recommendations on zinc intake across Europe (Cavelaars et al, 2010;Doets et al, 2008) (See Activity 1 in (Dhonukshe-Rutten et al, 2013).…”

Report on Stakeholders' activities in the area of emerging risks

“…It was followed by the EC-funded project BRAFO (www.brafo.org) that provides a tiered methodology for benefit-risk assessment in food. The EC-funded project EURRECA (www.eurreca.org) develops methodologies to standardise the process of setting micronutrient recommendations, which includes the assessment of safe micronutrient levels (Matthys et al 2010). Prior ILSI Europe-funded work also addresses the safety of micronutrients (Flynn et al 2003).…”