The Importance of Nutritional Epidemiology

Nutritional epidemiology is a field that seeks to study the relationship between diet and disease in human populations. It emerged in the 1980s and has become a major contributor to nutrition and health science. Nutritional epidemiology provides answers to many important questions about nutrition due to its unique exposure of diet, food, and nutrients. However, there are challenges in conducting good nutrition science, including the polyvalent nature of nutrients, where different compounds can fulfill the same physiological function or impact the same outcome. Additionally, isolating the specific effect of a single food component is difficult due to the complexity of diet composition and the interactions of bioactive substances within foods.