Paper of the Month: Nutrition Economics – food as an ally of public health

This month’s paper is from British Journal of Nutrition and is entitled ‘Nutrition economics – food as an ally of public health’. Below is the author's blog entry and a link to view the full paper. The World Economic Forum recently highlighted non-communicable diseases (NCD) as one of the three most significant risks to global well-being (i).   NCD are recognised as an increasing contributor to morbidity and mortality rates in developing and industrialised countries and their related escalating healthcare costs have become a major concern for health authorities all over the world. Epidemiological and scientific evidence demonstrates clear links between food and health maintenance/disease development indicating that much of the chronic disease burden is preventable through the modification of lifestyle behaviours.  Nutrition has been identified as an essential modifiable determinant of NCD.  Nutrition economics, a recent merge of health economics and nutrition sciences, aims to assess the impact of diet on health and disease outcomes and to evaluate options for changing food choices. Our paper brings together in a concise manner the significant role of nutrition to the forefront in global-scale public health relevance, through acknowledging the economic burden of undernutrition and/or overeating in specific countries.   Three presentations, demonstrating how nutrition-related health benefits can translate into economic terms are summarised and offer the reader k...
Source: The Nutrition Society - Category: Nutrition Authors: Source Type: news