dr. MP (Maartje) Poelman

I have a background in Nutrition (BSc) and Public Health Sciences (MSc, PhD) with an expertise in Prevention and Public Health Nutrition. My research addresses the food environment and how individuals interact with this environment. Moreover, my work is aimed at studying strategies that could improve the food environment.

National food environment monitoring system: Supported by the ministry of Health, Welfare and sport, we are examining how we can set-up a national system to monitor food availability and food promotions in supermarkets and other out-of-home food settings. The aim is to monitor the foodscape and to identify changes in food availability and promotions (e.g. envisaged by the National Prevention Agreement).

Policy Evaluation Network (PEN): as part of PEN, a JPI-HDHL-funded project and in collaboration with INFORMAS, we applied the Food-Environment Policy Index (Food-EPI).

1. To provide an overview of national/EU level policies with a direct or indirect (potential) influence on food environments (click here)
2. To assess the strength of national/EU level policies and identify implementation gaps, by non-government, independent experts
3. To identify and prioritize policy and infrastructure support actions to improve food environments, by non-government, independent experts (click here)

Regio Deal Food Valley - Healthy and Sustainable food environments: The Regio Deal Foodvalley is a multi-disciplinary collaboration between Wageningen University & Research Utrecht University, national and local governments, and entrepreneurs, aiming to boost transitions towards a healthy and sustainable food system. We aim to co-create and implement initiatives for healthy and sustainable food environments. The region will function as a living lab for pilots and experimentation to advance knowledge of food environments for healthy and sustainable diets. We target neighborhoods, work-places, health care-settings and out-of-home settings were food consumption takes place. (click here)  

Transition to a sustainable food system (Dutch Research Agenda (NWO): Current production and consumption of food have come at alarming environmental and health costs (e.g. nitrogen crisis, unhealthy diets). In cooperation with food system stakeholders, this project explores the characteristics of sustainable food systems and pathways to accelerate the transition to a healthy and sustainable food system in the Netherlands. (click here)