The project was originally described as a 5 theme-based project. These themes were assigned new working titles during the operative project period to maximize the synergy and output from the visiting fellows. The original ideas of the project proposal remained intact and alive during our stay at CAS. The results achieved were accordingly in agreement with this.

Topic 1, Social effects in early life: We collected data that will describe Norwegian parent’s nutritional knowledge and how they use it to influence children’s eating habits and behaviour. The resulting data suggest that parents’ knowledge and behaviour may not adjust to the rapidly changing food environment.

Topic 2, Food, gut, and health: Efficiently assessing healthiness of specific complex foods over life span is very demanding but nevertheless, important. The area is utterly challenged by rapid changes, mostly unnoticed, in the composition of food. We debated this and published two papers with meat as an example.

Topic 3, Food information and communication: Communication of healthiness and food related sustainability toward consumers was focussed. Should we use schools and school meals to communicate healthy eating, food production and food waste to support sustainability? Is this efficient and will it provide a lasting effect? The coming paper will present what we know and future perspectives.

Topic 4, Animal models and food ecology: We discussed the end-points obesity and ageing. Both combined, is an emerging societal issue as people both become older and more obese than before in the period before transforming into a sarcopenian state.  We discussed animal models to understand prevention and treatment better for this emerging population group.

Topic 5, Evolution of healthy eating: The evolution of food availability, food-sharing behaviour, advantages of adapting to specific foods (e.g. lactose tolerance) and more was discussed. We developed an idea for how this could be developed into a framework for a paper with relevance for the Norwegian society.

The stay was fantastic in terms of the interesting topics that we discussed and developed. The year was to start with an integration of many disciplines. To achieve such integration, the opportunities provided within the walls of CAS are unique and efficient. Our structure for the year was demanding and on the edge of being exhausting, but the stay at CAS has greatly improved our network globally and in Europe. It has led to the identification of important and updated research areas that we will pursue partly in collaboration with some of our visitors. Our improved network is likely to help us win future grants.

Following the academic year at CAS, we made short and long-term commitments both as a core group and together with several of the fellows that stayed with us at CAS. Primarily, we have made commitments to finish the papers that are in progress from the periods. Secondly, we have made commitments regarding finishing research projects that we started during the different periods. Some research activities (identification of healthier foods, communication to consumers, EU projects) dealt with in topic period 2, 3 and 4 are funded until the end of 2016.