The Importance of Nutrition for Health and Society

This article is copied from a page managed by the "Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

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.