Nutrition
The promise of health promoting foods to reduce the onset of vascular disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer and other major chronic illnesses linked to poor diet quality has consumers flocking to their local supermarkets in search of products that will help them to lead longer, healthier lives. At the same time, rising healthcare costs are leading governments to institute preventive health initiatives involving food. Today, technologies exist that can improve the nutrient quality of the food supply, and a variety of functional foods and ingredients are being developed using biomarkers to indicate health/disease risk reduction benefits.
Foods with health claims must be developed, commercialized and regulated in a safe and effective manner. Development of health promoting products not only requires agencies to create new regulatory pathways and streamlined review processes but requires food manufacturers to substantiate health claims through sound science. The IFSH Nutrition science focus area enables dialogue between industry and the FDA Center for Food Safety and Nutrition (CFSAN) on scientific goals for supporting such claims, and provides meaningful scientific data that builds consumer confidence in making healthful food choices for self, family and community.
Mission | Capabilities
The Nutrition science focus area is dedicated to developing food-based solutions that improve human health and reduce the risk of disease through research that validates the impact of health promoting foods on clinically relevant end-points.
IFSH's comprehensive, cross-disciplinary Nutrition research program assists food industry members in assuring the safety, quality and nutritive value of their products, and provides regulators with sound, science-based data to help inform related guidance and policy making.
IFSH's assets and capabilities include:
- Expertise in designing, planning and implementing human research studies to determine the health promoting benefits of foods and food compounds
- Access to human clinical trial facilities for studying biochemical and functional end-points of chronic disease, such as obesity and diabetes, and to state-of-the-art biochemistry and other laboratories
- Development of scientific data for improving the adoption of dietary guidelines
- Generating validation data on the beneficial effects of plant and dairy bioactives in foods and beverages
