Discuss why nutrition is a central component in health promotion. What are some of the nutritional challenges for emerging populations? What roles do nutritional deficiency and nutritional excess play in disease?

Discuss why nutrition is a central component in health promotion. What are some of the nutritional challenges for emerging populations? What roles do nutritional deficiency and nutritional excess play in disease?

A reduction in sodium intake remains particularly challenging due to the versatile role sodium chloride plays in food functionality, palatability, and health. The basic understanding of salt taste mechanisms and the physiology of sodium homeostasis in humans continues to be an active area of research and has impeded advances in the development of optimal and versatile salt reduction technology tools for food products. On the other hand, efforts to reduce fat and cholesterol intake have been more successful, with technologies having advanced sufficiently to develop products that meet both consumer taste and value expectations. However, this process took more than 20 years!Nutritional Challenges For Emerging Populations Essay

Important lessons learned from these findings: guideline recommendations that precede food technology capability will face considerable challenges of meeting set goals; even if a technology is available, time and research investments are needed to apply the technology to multiple food systems and categories; the need to understand basic mechanisms of food substance interactions is important to enable specific and widespread applications of relevant technologies; consumer acceptance of foods is critical to the success of any set of recommendation guidelines; sufficient time is needed to allow consumers to change their food and dietary behavior; multidisciplinary experts from all sectors, with research and application experience in food science and technology, nutrition, medicine, consumer behavior, economics, etc., should be part of the recommendation deliberation to ensure implementation and long term compliance and success.

Need for Research Investment and Scientific Integration
In 2011, the Foresight Report (9) concluded that “Investment in research on modern technologies is essential in light of the magnitude of the challenges for food security in the coming decades.” The complexity of the issues necessitates the development, application, coordination and sharing of integrated research approaches, and solutions across disciplines. Over the past decades, many different technologies and methodologies have been adapted from various disciplines that are now being applied to food and nutrition research. These technologies include nanotechnology, bioinformatics, genetics, chemical and biofortification, -omics, decision-analysis science, big-data analyses, risk assessment and management frameworks, neuroscience, optics, photonics, and neuroimaging.Nutritional Challenges For Emerging Populations Essay

Setting Focus and Priority Areas
The scope of the challenges is daunting and the path forward can be confusing in absence of a clear focus and set priorities. In 2010, the Institute of Food Technology (10) narrowed the focus in health and wellness to personalized nutrition, molecular biology, and microbial ecology. The American Society for Nutrition (11) and others (12) identified several priorities for nutrition research: individual variability in response to diet and foods; early nutrition needs for reproduction, growth, development; nutrition in health maintenance; nutrition in medical management; understanding nutrition related behaviors; understanding the food supply/environment. There are also more specific research areas to target including variability of living systems (e.g., microbiome, biological networks, tissue specificity); optimal function and energy balance; disease progression and care for sub populations; drivers of food choices; nutrition and brain functions and imprinting; drivers of food choices; composition of novel ingredients. And finally, there are suggestions to consider cross-disciplinary tools/approaches such as -omics, bioinformatics, databases, biomarkers, and cost-effective analyses.Nutritional Challenges For Emerging Populations Essay

Perhaps the most comprehensive path to building a future framework template is best summed up in the European Technology Platform report “Food for Life Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda” (9). The report reflects the European 2020 and beyond vision, which provides an integrated role of food science, nutrition, and consumer sciences. From this vision, three key challenges emerge: improved health, wellbeing, and longevity (“Life to years”); consumer trust in the food chain; sustainability. To gain consumer confidence in food products and the food system, powerful concepts for high-quality products with new properties/functionalities have been developed. These concepts aim at achieving preference, acceptance, and fulfilling the needs of the consumers via gentle processes, including, for example, the PAN concept and the reverse engineering concept. Another important aim is to describe the physiological impact of changes in food structures in the context of process–structure–functional property relationships in order to prevent de