History of modern nutrition science—implications for current research, dietary guidelines, and food policy

Dariush Mozaffarian, Irwin Rosenberg, Ricardo Uauy

Key messages

• Modern nutrition science is young: It is less than one century since the first vitamin was isolated in 1926

• The first half of the 20th century focused on the discovery, isolation, and synthesis of essential micronutrients and their role in deficiency diseases

• This created strong precedent for reductionist, nutrient focused approaches for dietary research, guidelines, and policy to address malnutrition

• This reductionist approach was extended to address the rise in diet related non-communicable diseases— eg, focusing on total fat, saturated fat, or sugar rather than overall diet quality

• Recent advances in nutrition science have shown that foods and diet patterns, rather than nutrient focused metrics, explain many effects of diet on non communicable disease

• Lower income countries are recognising a growing “double burden” (combined undernutrition and noncommunicable disease)

• Nutrition policy should prioritise food based dietary targets, public communication of trusted science, and integrated policy, investment, and cultural strategies to create systems level change across multiple organisations and environments

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