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    Food Nutrition

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    Luise Mauie
    The document discusses the complex connections between diet, nutrition, and health. It notes that while diet clearly impacts health, the specific biological mechanisms are not fully understood. It argues that gaining a complete understanding of how foods and nutrients influence our bodies is crucial for developing accurate dietary guidelines and interventions to promote public health and reduce healthcare costs. The BBSRC funds over £10-15 million in research annually using various bioscience techniques to better elucidate the relationships between nutrition and health.

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    Food Nutrition

    Uploaded by

    Luise Mauie
    23 views2 pages
    The document discusses the complex connections between diet, nutrition, and health. It notes that while diet clearly impacts health, the specific biological mechanisms are not fully understood. It argues that gaining a complete understanding of how foods and nutrients influence our bodies is crucial for developing accurate dietary guidelines and interventions to promote public health and reduce healthcare costs. The BBSRC funds over £10-15 million in research annually using various bioscience techniques to better elucidate the relationships between nutrition and health.

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    FOOD NUTRITION

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    The document discusses the complex connections between diet, nutrition, and health. It notes that while diet clearly impacts health, the specific biological mechanisms are not fully understood. It argues that gaining a complete understanding of how foods and nutrients influence our bodies is crucial for developing accurate dietary guidelines and interventions to promote public health and reduce healthcare costs. The BBSRC funds over £10-15 million in research annually using various bioscience techniques to better elucidate the relationships between nutrition and health.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    23 views2 pages

    Food Nutrition

    Uploaded by

    Luise Mauie
    The document discusses the complex connections between diet, nutrition, and health. It notes that while diet clearly impacts health, the specific biological mechanisms are not fully understood. It argues that gaining a complete understanding of how foods and nutrients influence our bodies is crucial for developing accurate dietary guidelines and interventions to promote public health and reduce healthcare costs. The BBSRC funds over £10-15 million in research annually using various bioscience techniques to better elucidate the relationships between nutrition and health.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    The connections between our foods, the nutrients they provide and our

    health are complex, but have far-reaching consequences for individuals


    and society. As changing diets and dietary habits place an increasing
    burden on healthcare systems, it is crucial that we develop new
    products, interventions and refined guidelines which will improve health
    through diet. Achieving this will depend upon a complete understanding
    of the biological processes which connect the foods we eat to our long-
    term health.

    The importance of nutrition for health and society

    Eating a well-balanced diet, with adequate nutrients and appropriate calories,


    is a fundamental requirement for continued health. An appropriate diet
    contributes to healthy development, healthy ageing and greater resilience
    against disease. Similarly, a poor or inappropriate diet places people at
    greater risk of infection and a range of chronic illnesses – including cancer,
    type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

    Despite the clear connections between nutrition and health, more than half of
    the UK population are obese or overweight, consumption of fruit and
    vegetables is falling and the calorie density of the average shopping basket is
    increasing. Meanwhile, around three million people in the UK are
    malnourished, including 25% of those in hospital and 42% in long-term care.

    This represents a serious economic and social challenge. High body mass
    index is one of the leading risk factors for chronic disease in the UK,
    accounting for 9% (£5.1Bn per year) of NHS spend. The cost to the wider
    economy is vast at around £16Bn per year, rising to £50Bn by 2050 if action is
    not taken. As costs escalate, the need for new products and interventions to
    promote health through our diets is becoming ever more urgent.

    Research to improve health through nutrition

    There is enormous potential to develop new or improved products, health


    interventions and more accurate dietary guidelines which will improve health
    through nutrition. However, fully realising this potential will require a complete
    understanding of exactly how our food influences our health.

    Although it is clear that nutrition and health are intimately connected, precisely
    how the biological connections work is often unclear. Large population
    analyses can identify a correlation between a particular food or diet and a
    particular health outcome, but without knowing the mechanism which links the
    two we cannot be sure that the effect is real – and we cannot use this
    knowledge to refine dietary advice or develop new products. Current
    uncertainty about the health consequences of different types of sugars and fat
    demonstrates that our understanding of what constitutes a “healthy” diet is far
    from complete.

    New scientific techniques are providing opportunities to develop a much more


    complete understanding of how we choose our foods, exactly what effects
    different foods and nutrients have on our bodies, how they interact and what
    the long term consequences for our health might be. By really getting to grips
    with the biological mechanisms at work, we can develop confident and
    accurate dietary advice which is tailored to different population groups, and
    nutritional interventions which will improve the health of at risk-individuals.
    Fully understanding the quantities and combinations of nutrients and diets
    which will best improve health means that new products and food processing
    techniques can be developed to make our diets healthier.

    How BBSRC are involved

    We invest £10-15M per year on research directly related to human nutrition


    and health. One of our key aims is to fund research which uses the latest
    techniques and technologies from across bioscience to conclusively answer
    the fundamental questions about relationships between food, nutrition and
    health. In order to achieve this we expect to support researchers in the other
    areas which we fund – for example immunology, neuroscience and
    microbiology – to apply their expertise to nutritional questions. Furthermore,
    we are working closely with industry to identify new interdisciplinary
    challenges and mechanisms by which we can facilitate innovation across the
    food sector.

    BBSRC provides funding which helps to ensure that advances in our scientific
    understanding translate into benefits for society and for the economy.
    Together with our Research Council partners at MRC, ESRC and EPSRC, we
    have brought together 14 food and drink companies to support research
    through the Diet and Health Research Industry Club (DRINC). DRINC
    supports research which will enable the food and drink industry to develop
    products with enhanced health benefits for consumers.

    We fund research at universities across the UK, but also support a research
    institute dedicated to understanding food and health (the Quadram Institute).
    Together with the Quadram Institute, the University of East Anglia and the
    North Norfolk University Hospital Trust, we are developing plans for a new,
    national research centre to meet the pressing challenge of maintaining good
    health through a good diet.

    https://bbsrc.ukri.org/research/briefings/food-nutrition-health/

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