Study focuses on diet and digestion throughout life

Studies into diet and digestion at different life stages and how this influences long-term health, will be a focus of research funded by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Research Council’s (BBSRC’s) funding strategy in the next five years (2007-2012).

Because of limited research into this and other ‘blue sky’ areas, the BBSRC, has set as a priority the funding of studies into ‘The human gastrointestinal tract as a biological system’. Other key areas will be ‘Diet as a modifier of development and health’ and ‘Nutrition, metabolic regulation, ageing and health - a life course approach’

Setting out its research strategy for food earlier this month, the BBSRC said: “It is important to study gut function across the life course, from infancy to old age.” This will require the collaboration of biologists, mathematicians, engineers and physical scientists to develop theoretical models. And the BBSRC added: “This is a significant challenge.”

Regarding the relationship between diet and health, the BBSRC noted: “Little is known about the detailed mechanisms whereby nutrition early in life, eg during fetal development or infancy, can affect health and cognitive functioning decades later.” It added that recent research studies provided a unique opportunity to understand the molecular basis of early life programming on later health. “It is also possible that early-life nutritional experience leaves an imprint through stochastic [random] damage and/or the long-term consequences of altered growth, which can affect later health and cognitive functioning.”

The BBSRC said: “A consensus is emerging that sleep restriction has an impact on appetite regulation and metabolic function and chronically may contribute to failing homeostasis [the body’s natural control mechanism to changes it experiences]. Maintaining metabolic homeostasis throughout the life course is likely to be key to healthy ageing.”

It is now also recognised that diet can moderate the rate of ageing through an ability to retard homeostatic decline, said the BBRSC. “But our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of ageing and how diet can ameliorate the physiological and cognitive decline into ill-health is very incomplete.”

• Food Manufacture​’s sister magazine Food Ingredients, Health & Nutrition​ (FIHN) is staging a conference, ‘Lifestage nutrition’, in Frankfurt on February 7 2008 exploring how nutritional interventions at different life stages may play a decisive part in improving quality of life and reducing the risk of developing degenerative conditions of age. For more details, log on to Lifestage Nutrition conference​