A group of experts on nutrition research and policy recently made a call to action in a new white paper published by the American Society for Nutrition, which calls for the network of federal agencies involved in nutrition policy to receive more funding and engage in better cross-government coordination while conducting research.
 
The group first summarized their recommendations during a virtual event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center, and since, a long list of nutrition institutions and companies have endorsed the recommendations made by the group of experts, whose backgrounds include roles in academia, medicine, private research organizations, the nutrition industry, and federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, and National Institutes of Health.
 
“Every day, our country suffers massive health, social, and economic costs of poor diets. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the burdens of diet-related diseases on population resilience,” Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, dean and Jean Mayer professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said. “The nation has come together to achieve major science challenges in the past, such as putting a man on the moon. We need a similar national effort to address current nutrition challenges, generating the critical science to rapidly treat and prevent diet-related diseases, improve health equity, increase population resilience to COVID-19 and future pandemics, and drive fundamental and translational discoveries for better lives.”
 
“The American Society for Nutrition has long advocated to strengthen nutrition research, and this new white paper comprehensively assesses federal nutrition research efforts, bringing to light challenges and opportunities for better health for Americans,” Richard D. Mattes, PhD, MPH, RD, and former ASN president, said. “Strengthening and investing in federal nutrition research will generate new discoveries to improve the health of Americans, reduce chronic diseases, disparities, and healthcare costs, strengthen military readiness and American businesses, and reinvigorate farming and rural communities.”
 
Summarily, the authors believe that there are two complementary strategies which might streamline federal nutrition research, which is currently conducted separately by ten different departments and agencies.
 
The authors recommend that a new office or task force, such as “Office of the National Director of Food and Nutrition (ONDFN)” or a “U.S. Task Force on Federal Nutrition Research” be established, with the primary role of cross-coordinating the efforts of separate government entities. Alternatively, they believe that funding should be increased dramatically to NIH, the federal entity that spends the most on nutrition research.
The ONDFN would be led by a new, cabinet-level director of National Food and Nutrition, who would serve as a nutrition advisor to the White House, and would function to delegate federal investments in research across relevant departments, among other priorities. Some of the advantages to this approach is that it would have a much stronger platform than current advisory committees that do exist, and, additionally, would annually report to and collaborate with the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. Membership could be sourced from other departments and agencies in order identify topics of strategic interest across the entities with which these leaders work with. However, the authors consider the role to be too politically high-level, naturally focusing on federal nutrition issues beyond research, which may dilute its focus on clinical trials.
 
“[Departments’ and agencies’] relative investments in nutrition research have remained flat or declined over several decades – even as diet-related conditions and their societal burdens have climbed,” the authors wrote. “The NIH is the largest funder, with nutrition research investments estimated at $1.9 billion annually (about 5% of total NIH funding) for the fiscal year 2019. Approximately 25% of this funding (1.3% of total NIH funding) focuses on diet for the prevention or treatment of disease in humans[…] no concrete authority has been created to successfully harmonize and leverage the federal investments in nutrition research.”
 
More Americans are sick than are healthy, predominantly suffering from diet-related illnesses. Over the last 20 years, the number of adults with diabetes in the U.S. has more than doubled, and, today, half of all American adults suffer from diabetes or prediabetes, the authors report. Additionally, cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death, attributable to 840,000 deaths each year. It is estimated that 3 in 4 Americans are overweight. Further, the COVID-19 outbreak has laid bare these strains, either by poor outcomes from the virus itself, insufficient coordination of food supply chains, or food insecurities, all of which disproportionately effect low-income, rural, minority, and other underserved populations.
 
“The opportunities to be gained by greater coordination and investment in federal nutrition research are clear, with potential for large and rapid ROI,” the authors concluded. “Each of the identified options in this report would help create the new leadership, strategic planning, coordination and investment the nation requires to address the challenges and grasp the opportunities we face.”