Precision Nutrition for low- and-middle-income countries

Malawi

Precision Public Health Nutrition is an approach to support human nutrition through accurate data collection to better inform nutritional recommendations for at-risk groups worldwide.

One-size-fits-all approaches in public health nutrition have come under scrutiny in recent years, due to evidence of untargeted nutrition interventions causing negative outcomes. At the same time, new sophisticated technologies that can accurately measure human health, dietary intake, and nutritional status promise to better inform interventions and reduce unintended harm.

Precision nutrition is an approach that uses detailed scientific information on the biological, behavioral, ecological, and environmental factors of individuals or stratified groups to develop targeted, accessible, affordable, desirable nutrition solutions that offer measurable benefit. In low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), precision nutrition can be harnessed to develop safe, effective nutrition solutions for target populations in these regions.

Key details

Metabolomics. Sight and Life has identified -omics, a high-throughput precision nutrition tool, as a critical approach for collecting precise dietary intake and nutritional status data to inform targeted treatments. Specifically, in Malawi, Sight and Life is applying metabolomics to assess the impact of the Egg Hub social marketing strategy. Learn more about the ‘eggciting’ work on the effects of egg powders as a supplement and biomarkers of egg consumption.
Precision Nutrition for low- and middle-income countries (PN for LMIC) Impact pot 4: In 2021, Sight and Life became a member of the Swiss Food & Nutrition Valley (SFNV) and currently leads impact pot 4 in collaboration with SFNV and other institutions such as EPFL, Nestlé and York Consumer Health. The aim of the working group is to make precision nutrition more accessible, affordable, and desirable to LMIC as an approach to tackle the most pressing nutrition challenges of today. To date, a needs assessment that examined the relevance of precision nutrition to tackle nutrition challenges in LMIC and a virtual workshop was held in November 2022 to further discuss the learnings, challenges, and opportunities.
Next steps include stakeholder surveys to gain a better and deeper understanding of the needs and challenges for implementation of precision nutrition and identification of proof-of-concept projects for those most in need.