Making Public Health Nutrition relevant to evidence-based action: are we doing enough?

Abstract

Public health nutrition enjoyed many breakthroughs in the 20th century from the discovery of vitamins and the metabolic roles of some 60 macro- and micronutrients, to the effects of maternal and childhood diet on health over the life course. Moreover, the food shortages in the UK that were experienced during World War II gave the first opportunity to show that nutritional science could make a valuable contribution to public policy. However, public health nutrition is now facing the challenge of deriving recommendations based on systematically evaluated evidence; that is, the new concept of evidence-based nutrition. This challenge was foreseen by John Garrow almost 10 years ago in his lucid editorial proposing the formation of meta-analysis clubs'.