As a member of the European Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, COFACE is duty bound to take a stand on health, nutrition and obesity issues. The family is a key learning environment, and early childhood is when habits are learned that are apt to become entrenched. It is also useful to develop a culinary education within the family.

The platform creates a forum for actors at European level who can commit their membership to engage in concrete actions designed to contain or reverse current trends to overweight and obesity.

In 2008 COFACE hosted a seminar on nutrition in Sofia to give member associations an awareness of the importance of the issue and the need for urgent action by raising awareness among families. The seminar Nutrition: a family matter was a commitment given by COFACE through its membership of the Platform.

In 2009 COFACE hosted a seminar on Health Determinants. The aim was to focus on lesser-known health determinants like well-being, stress, and personal empowerment to point up the importance of a much more educational approach to tackling health problems rather than the traditional “authoritarian” method of lecturing people about healthy lifestyles (diet and exercise).


In 2010 COFACE focused its activities on Nutritional labelling. Despite the spread of voluntary food labelling by food companies, consumers continue to find it a confusing muddle. The plethora of different labelling schemes leaves consumers bewildered.

COFACE recommends that mandatory food labelling models be introduced at EU level based on product type and available space on both the front and back labels. Nevertheless, a certain flexibility should be permitted to take into account specificities of Member States as well as cultural references. See COFACE's positition on nutritional labelling below. You will also find more information on the FLABEL project page.


In 2011-2012, COFACE will be fine-tuning its media education tool on advertising techniques to help teachers devise courses on media literacy. The tool will be mainly focused on diet/nutrition-related TV advertising.

By providing teachers with a media education tool explaining how to analyse food adverts using practical examples, we will be providing them with resources for teaching media studies as part of the school curriculum, and so encourage children to look critically at advertising, and highlight the importance of a healthy diet and lifestyle. Our media literacy tool will obviously also be usable by other educators - parents and associations like family organisations – who can set up their own "courses" on it.