Junior Research Scientist on food systems and health

The joint INRAE-AgroParisTech Physiology of Nutrition and Eating Behaviour (PNCA) research unit comprises three teams, including the PROSPECT team (4 researchers/teaching-researchers and a research engineer), which conducts research in nutrition & public health, focusing on the relationship between animal and plant protein consumption, nutritional security and the prevention of chronic diseases. The team has largely developed approaches for modelling changes in food consumption (diet simulation and optimisation) and their impact on nutritional risk in the short (nutritional security) and long term (incidence of chronic diseases); it also assesses other aspects of the sustainability of diets using multi-criteria approaches (environmental impacts, other health risks, etc.). The team is particularly interested in dietary transitions towards a more plant-based diet, and is seeking to identify the most influential dietary and nutritional factors as barriers and levers to sustainable transitions. You will join the team to take part in its work, and in particular to develop a new interdisciplinary research theme on the sustainability of food systems.
In order to develop this topic, the team wishes to invest in integrating the characteristics of the upstream food system (production and processing), in the spirit of using Human health as a driver of food systems evolution.
Working within the team and in interdisciplinary external collaboration (at local, national and international levels), your work will be part of a prospective study of the transition toward more plant-based diet and will consist of analysing the obstacles and levers at the level of food systems. You will be analysing the importance of variations in the quality of agricultural raw materials and the actual or potential formulation of foods, projecting their health effects at a population scale. To this aim, you will benefit from the approach initiated in the team by conducting research into the substitutability of ingredients and its repercussions on the nutritional and health value of diets. Interdisciplinary works would be raised on bio-fortification levers. Finally, in the longer term, you could consider combining simple food science models with models of the impact of diets on nutrition and health.