Tackling malnutrition

“The unprecedented scale of the malnutrition crisis demands an unprecedented response. We must double our efforts to ensure that the most vulnerable children have access to nutritious, safe, and affordable diets - and services for the early prevention, detection and treatment of malnutrition. With so many children’s lives and futures at stake, this is the time to step up our ambition for child nutrition – and we have no time to waste.”  UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell

Malnutrition is one of the greatest challenges of our times. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in three people all over the world is currently facing at least one form of malnutrition, this ranging from undernutrition, which includes wasting, stunting and underweight, deficiencies of vitamins or minerals, overweight and obesity, and resulting in diet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

Recent progress in reducing hunger and malnutrition in different countries and regions has been severely backtracked due to the global COVID-19 pandemic and other crises, including the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, thus exacerbating the existing difficulties in guaranteeing food security worldwide, especially for the most vulnerable populations.

WP 6.1 will provide a roadmap for malnutrition in vulnerable subjects through a systematic evaluation of the nutritional status of children affected by obesity and the ageing population at risk of malnutrition and non-communicable diseases (NCDs), together with the investigation of critical issues influencing their health condition, and the creation of a biobank for human-derived biological samples. WP 6.1 will also design an ICT database for integrating data from different sources, including social and environmental lifestyle and their related actual dietary patterns, nutritional status, and biochemical and omics data.

WP 6.2 focuses on reducing malnutrition in target-specific populations through a sustainable, tailored, multidimensional approach based on the interrelations between environment, food, genotype, and phenotype. This entails the analysis of positive and negative interactions between lifestyle, socioeconomic status, clinical condition, psychological distress, medical treatment, and diet for implementing sustainable dietary patterns, validating malnutrition biomarkers, and drafting new sustainable nutritional protocols. Developing an experimental model which examines the impacts of new sustainable bioactive molecules on malnutrition is part of the package activities, as well as creating a personalised web-responsive application for monitoring sustainable target-specific dietary patterns.

Work Package 6.3 assesses the relationship between the gut microbiome and malnutrition by evaluating the gut microbiome features of children and elderly subjects who are malnourished or have malnutrition-related disorders. 

The research focuses on the effects of sustainable personalised nutrition and microbial-derived products on malnutrition-associated gut microbiome alterations. It aims to develop an algorithm to predict the risk of gut dysbiosis associated with malnutrition and malnutrition-related diseases and investigate the potential of personalised nutrition and microbial-derived products as preventive and therapeutic measures against malnutrition.

Work Package 6.4 encourages sustainable dietary practices as a nutritional approach to treating malnourished target groups. Its activity entails creating and evaluating prototypes of food, supplements, ingredients, and nutraceuticals to restore resilience in people suffering from malnutrition. 

A user-friendly, tailored web-based application for virtual promotion and target-specific supervision of sustainable eating routines is also implemented, while food policy dissemination and information will be ensured for a wider influence of research outcomes.