FDA Commissioner Addresses NCFST/FDA Joint Workshop on Innovations in Nutrition Science

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach, M.D., urged experts at a nutrition and health workshop today to seize new opportunities to advance scientific knowledge about the way in which foods promote health and prevent disease.

Co-organized by the National Center for Food Safety and Technology (NCFST) at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and FDA, the one-day workshop, “The Role of Innovation and Technology in Meeting Individual Nutritional Needs,” was held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washngton, DC. Approximately 50 leading regulators and scientists from government, nutrition and medical science, behavior and consumer science, and the food industry discussed the state of the science in genomics, metagenomics, behavior, and food and information technology and new opportunities for bridging technology and innovation in these areas with desired health outcomes through food. The group also focused on identifying and prioritizing a potential research agenda needed to implement personalized nutrition opportunities that promote health and prevent disease and set a pathway for implementing the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

“This is an extraordinarily important meeting that is critically important to the health and well-being of all of us,” said Commissioner von Eschenbach. “We’ve reached a pivotal change point in the history of medicine. We are moving from gaining scientific knowledge based on macroscopic and microscopic observations of disease, those based on the five senses, to a point now where science and technology give us the ability to actually understand mechanistic aspects of disease, information we cannot obtain from the five senses.“

Understanding the triggers and processes of disease opens up the possibility of making personalized, preventive and predictive medicine a reality, he explained. “The single most important biological modifier of health is the food we eat. Everyone in this meeting is a trailblazer, designers of a new future, and I encourage you to ‘think big’ about the opportunities that we can realize through diet to promote health and prevent or reduce risks from disease. FDA applauds this initiative and is committed to join in collaborative efforts with other federal agencies, academia, states and industry to help as a catalyst in these opoortunities.”

Speakers also included FDA Associate Commissioner David Acheson, who challenged the group to “go beyond obesity in terms of the issues”; FDA CFSAN Director Stephen Sundlof, who noted that NCFST and other centers of excellence are “critical to the mission of policy built on strong science”; Brian Wansink, executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion; Sheila Weiss, director of nutrition policy, National Restaurant Association; and Marcie Bartolotta, manager of employee wellness, Wegmans Food Markets.

In 2007, NCFST launched a new scientific research platform for the study of health-promoting foods. In 2008, the organization completed outfitting a new Clinical Nutrition Research Center (CRNC) in downtown Chicago under the helm of Britt Burton-Freeman, Ph.D., director, nutrition and health promoting foods platform at NCFST. CRNC supports scientific inquiry and validation of relevant factors in foods and beverages that promote health and reduce disease risk. The center will design and conduct human research to identify public health opportunities through diet and lifestyle, including obesity and weight management, satiety and appetite control, vascular and gastrointestinal health, and issues associated with diabetes and cancer. CRNC will also conduct research to determine and validate the health benefits of foods, including safety and efficacy, bioavailability and mechanism of action.

The 5,000-sq.-ft. CRNC facility houses multiple exam rooms, a metabolic kitchen, two food intake suites and a specimen processing lab, with a biochemistry lab located on NCFST’s Moffet Campus. CRNC offers standard and specialized laboratory analyses, including basic chemistry, metabolic and lipid panels, gut peptides, incretins, adipokines, sex hormones, oxidative stress markers, inflammatory markers, endothelial function tests, and platelet function tests.

The National Center for Food Safety and Technology (NCFST) is a unique research consortium located at Illinois Institute of Technology's Moffett Campus (near Chicago) in Summit-Argo, IL, composed of scientists from the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and the food industry. NCFST’s research addresses the food safety implications of emerging technologies in food processing and packaging and supports the development of safe food with health-promoting properties from farm to fork. For more, visit www.ncfst.iit.edu

Founded in 1890, IIT is a Ph.D.-granting university with more than 7,300 students in engineering, sciences, architecture, psychology, design, humanities, business and law. IIT's interprofessional, technology-focused curriculum is designed to advance knowledge through research and scholarship, to cultivate invention improving the human condition, and to prepare students from throughout the world for a life of professional achievement, service to society, and individual fulfillment. Visit www.iit.edu