The Nutritional Phenotype Database Workshop
at NCTR, Jefferson AR, 20-21 January 2010

link to program and presentations

What will nutrition research look like in ten years time? And what will we eat? Why?  Nutrition science needs to provide tools for researchers to demonstrate what is good for me and my health, and will make it possible for me to have a happy and healthy old age....and the recommendations should be evidenced based for each individual.

Wouldn`t that be nice! But in order for this to happen, we need to do some work. Nutrition science is now embedded in a biology science revolution, with an explosion of information and technology. Are we optimally connected to this revolution? Do we have access to the information, data and results that we need to develop more reliable nutrition and health research and knowledge? Do we actually know what we need?

The past twenty years of the worldwide obesity epidemic has proven the long term consequences of ‘nutrition and metabolic stress’ and the resulting impact on personal, public, and economic health.  Nevertheless, the human body successfully copes with enormous variations in calories and nutrients due to complex homeostasis machinery where many processes interact. This complexity is reflected in the many genetic variations that alter the nutrition and health relationship. Analyzing the nutrient intakes and other environmental variables is necessary to understand complex biological processes and systems. 

For managing, storing, accessing data, results, and information from nutrition research, three main issues emerge:

1)       Are the available “generic biology” resources useful for nutrition research? Many databases and tools are available or are being developed, but many lack data fields that nutrition science needs: biochemical pathways, genotype-phenotype translations, study capture tools, and metadata for how the experiments were done.  How do we cope with this?

2)       Are there specific nutrition resources that are not the domain of “generic biology” disciplines?  Some nutrition specific data are dependent on our community - food composition databases and food intake quantification are examples.

3)       Is the (national and international) nutrition research community optimally organized to utilize what it has and develop what it needs? The ‘psychology’ of a research community has conflicting or at least paradoxical aspects: satisfying funding agencies and grant panels, regional pride, and egoism may clash with the need for standardization, sharing, and collaborative efforts. As technologies and fields mature, the usual path from chaos (individual pioneers) to structure (integrated standards) is necessary to optimize research strategies, reduce costs, and improve the reliability of results and the ensuing knowledge base. In a rapidly changing world, can we optimize this track towards ‘nutrition science 2.0’?   

The European Nutrigenomics Organisation (NuGO) has pioneered solutions to these questions and challenges since 2004 and proposes a ‘model’ to moderate optimal integration and collaboration.  NuGO seeks to engage the international community in its efforts, the first of which is the ‘nutritional phenotype database’ project.   

This workshop aims to address these issues, by making an inventory of our needs, reflecting on ongoing work. and discussing the best way forward.  We hope for, and aim at more than a successful workshop. Our goal is to establish a better foundation and roadmap for the international nutrition community. We are optimists….

Ben van Ommen and Jim Kaput