Evidence for dietary recommendations—the role of nutritional epidemiology

Randomized controlled trials (RCT) are optimal for causal inference.

However, in nutrition RCT are not always feasible because of challenges with randomization, blinding, adherence and extended time between exposure and outcome.

Hence, most evidence is derived from observational cohort studies, why the ability of nutritional epidemiology to create scientific evidence has been questioned. To meet this challenge, much methodological development has occured over the last decade.

The 6th edition of the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR2022) is launched in June 2023 and subsequently adopted as official nutrition recommendation in Sweden.

The aim of the symposium is to discuss how scientific evidence is created in nutrition research for the purpose of setting dietary guidelines in light of NNR2022. International speakers will share research on concordance in results between RCT and cohort studies in nutrition.

Experiences of evaluating scientific evidence on associations between diet and health by the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition will be discussed.

Examples from NNR2022 will be highlighted with a focus on the evidence of relationships between dietary patterns and health. Issues related to the translation of nutrition recommendations to food based dietary guidelines will be discussed. Target audience are researchers and practitioners in public health, media and interested general public.

The symposium is arranged by the National Committee of Nutrition and Food Science, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA) and the Swedish Food Agency. It will take place at KVA in a hall for 138 participants. The event will be video recorded and released on KVA:s Youtube platform. The organizing committee arranged a similar symposium in 2014 when the previous NNR was released.

This was well attended and received much media attention.

We expect similar output this time, due to the strong interest by the general public and media in issues related to diet and health.