The “Nourishment Table” was presented in Brussels, moving from the concept of a “healthy diet” to “adequate nourishment.”

On November 18, 2025, the event “How can European livestock production ensure food accessibility and food and nutritional security for EU citizens?” was held at the European Parliament, hosted by the Renew Europe group and sponsored by Belgian MEP Benoît Cassart. Within this institutional framework, the new Nourishment Table — developed by an international group of scientists led by Professor Frédéric Leroy — was presented as a potential new paradigm for global food policies.

Relaunched within the Nourish Your Choice platform, the Nourishment Table is the tool that, even during the Brussels event, allowed the debate to reopen, often dominated by slogans and ideological conflicts.

What is the Nourishment Table?

The Nourishment Table was born in response to a clear problem: the inadequacy of the generic concept of a “healthy diet”—almost always associated with predominantly plant-based, low-fat diets—to effectively guide contemporary food choices. The Nourishment Table instead proposes a broader and more rigorous concept: “adequate nourishment,” an approach based on two verifiable scientific parameters:

1. Nutritional density, that is, the ratio between essential nutrients and energy content.
2. The degree of food transformation is assessed using the NOVA classification.

The union of these two axes produces a visual framework that allows us to understand which food combinations promote health and which compromise it. Research shows that omnivorous diets rich in minimally or moderately processed, nutrient-dense foods represent one of the most robust paths to adequate nutrition.

The approach is inclusive and culturally sensitive: it recognises the value of local food traditions, personal preferences, and even plant-based diets, which, however, the research emphasises, require careful planning and often the use of fortified foods or supplements to avoid deficiencies in key nutrients such as vitamin B12, iron, or omega-3s.

The message of scientific evidence

The studies cited in the project note that “traditional” and “ancestral” diets observed in populations worldwide tend to include a significant proportion of animal-based foods. Analysis of dietary patterns shows that a diet in which at least 25–30% of calories come from animal-based foods such as meat, fish, eggs, and dairy products tends to promote good health, avoiding deficiencies in micronutrients such as iron, zinc, vitamin B12, iodine, and calcium, which are difficult to obtain from exclusively plant-based sources.

The positions of the scientists who spoke in Brussels

During the event, Professor Alice Stanton of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland highlighted how a forced reduction in animal-based foods could exacerbate already widespread deficiencies, particularly among women, children, and the elderly. She also noted that many benefits attributed to plant-based diets derive not from the absence of meat, but from increased consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains, and from lower overall calorie intake. She called for avoiding dogmatic impositions and for guidelines to be based on solid clinical evidence.

Frédéric Leroy, professor of Food Science and Technology at the University of Brussels, explained the structure of the Nourishment Table and said that omnivorous humans can achieve optimal nutrition through multiple dietary patterns, as long as they respect the limits set by nutrient density and processing levels. Moderate processing can even improve safety and digestibility, while excessive processing compromises food quality. The Nourishment Table, he explained, does not prescribe a diet, but offers rational criteria for evaluating available choices and making them sustainable in the long term.

The Mediterranean Diet is a local expression of a universal principle: proper nutrition, not just health.

In the debate sparked by the Nourishment Table, it is crucial to clarify how this new framework relates to established dietary patterns. It is, in fact, important to clarify the meaning of the Nourishment Table in the context of current guidelines. The Mediterranean Diet, for example, is a model based on balance, variety, and respect for food cultures. “It is a solid reference, but no longer sufficient as the sole scientific and political response to global nutritional challenges,” Professor Giuseppe Pulina explains, president of Carni Sostenibili: “The point is not to overcome it, but rather to place it within a broader system of ‘adequate nutrition,’ as the Nourishment Table proposes.”

This new framework, in fact, does not replace existing models but interprets and connects them through two scientific axes of reference: nutritional density and food processing, which enable us to assess their coherence and adaptability. “The Mediterranean Diet is one of the best examples of balance between nutrients and food processes, but its strength becomes even more evident when it is interpreted as a local expression of a universal principle: adequate nutrition, not just healthily,” Pulina adds. “It is on this basis that we can build a coherent, scientifically grounded, and politically relevant message: the Nourishment Table is not ‘another diet,’ but the interpretative key that allows us to update and make the Mediterranean vision of nutrition more inclusive.”

The Nourishment Table is therefore more than a tool: it is an attempt to build a new nutritional literacy, capable of combining science, common sense, and freedom of choice. In a world where obesity, malnutrition, and information confusion coexist, the Nourishment Table offers a compass for orientation, free of ideologies or simplifications.

And the final message is clear: there is no perfect diet that works for everyone, but there are objective criteria for understanding which foods and which combinations truly nourish us best.