Evidence Based Nutrition Meeting 27th May 2010

The Food and Health Section of the Royal Society of Medicine is holding its next full day presentation on the 27th May 2010.

Overview

• There is currently no consensus about how the beneficial associations between the consumption of foods and food constituents and body health can be tested and firmly established. Conclusive proof is plainly required today as the basis for setting nutrient intake recommendations and for assessing the substantiating evidence for nutritional and physiological benefits in the form of health claims on foods and food constituents.
• The current imperative is that any opinions and recommendations should be ‘evidence based’, an objective with which it would be hard to disagree. However, the key questions relate to what constitutes the totality of the evidence and by what means it should be developed and weighed.
• The purpose of the workshop is therefore to review some of the problems associated with evidence-based nutrition, to discuss what constitutes efficacy for foods and food constituents and how the strength and consistency of the evidence can be assessed.

Specific questions will be addressed concerning how to:

• Define the ‘totality of the evidence’
• Take into account the strength and limitations of different sources of evidence
• Determine the appropriateness of the application of evidence-based medicine, which relies on randomised clinical trials (RCTs) to evaluate the efficacy and safety of drugs for individual patient care and for public health policy, to the assessment of dietary factors and health.
• Develop a scientific framework to assess the amount and quality of the evidence and the overall levels of certainty about food and health relationships.
• Utilise, develop and validate physiological risk factors (biomarkers) and behavioural risk factors (including dietary risk factors) in evidence-based nutrition.
• Apply evidence from preclinical and clinical studies and biomarkers developed for disease identification and progression to the normal healthy population.
• Identify functional biomarkers within the normal healthy homeostatic ranges.
• Provide policymakers and regulators with a practical scientific framework for making decisions and recommendations about diet and health.

Booking details

For further details and registration please visit the Royal Society of Medicines Web Site.