Public health nutrition
Diet is an important modifiable risk factor for many chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Dietary recommendations are therefore important for the primary prevention of disease and maintenance of health.
Nutrition epidemiology is an established and important method to investigate associations between diet and disease in large populations. However, this relies on accurate data on dietary intake. Currently, most observational studies rely on self-reported intake and it is known that participants are less likely to report the consumption of foods considered to be undesirable. This not only introduces bias, but also attenuates any associations observed.
“Nutritional biomarkers are an alternative method to self-reporting and they can provide a more objective measure of intake. The development and application of new nutritional biomarkers is therefore crucial for nutritional research. We are using a variety of approaches to develop and validate novel biomarkers (e.g. individual compounds, metabolites or stable isotope ratios), which we then use to investigate links between diet and health.”