SPECIAL SESSION: Navigating a Program of Research Through the Ever-Changing Labyrinth of Nutritional Recommendations

Description/Overview: Nutrition can play an important role in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. Consequently, interventions that help individuals manage their diet as part of a comprehensive heart-healthy life-style are needed to improve cardiovascular health. The importance of tailoring interventions to make them culturally and socio-economically relevant is well-recognized, challenge. There are two external factors, however, that make developing nutrition-related interventions particularly challenging: the frequent changes in nutritional recommendations and the food industry’s response to these recommendations. For example, all dietary fats were initially thought to be the major culprits in cardiovascular disease. Interventions were developed to promote low fat diets. The food industry responded by creating low fat foods that were high in carbohydrates which contributed to the obesity epidemic. Research showed that some fats were beneficial and recommendations were change to target only saturated and trans fats. The food industry has responded by producing trans-fat free foods that are touted as health but remain high in calories and low in nutrients. Low sodium diets have been a recommendation to prevent and treat hypertension and to control fluid volume in patients with heart failure for over 50 years. The food industry provided low sodium foods that were often high in fat to provide flavor. Results from recent studies have challenged that recommendation in both populations making it difficult for know what is best to recommend. Limiting dietary cholesterol was recommended for the past 45 years until it was dropped from the most recent guidelines. The recent rapid changes in nutrition recommendations is due in part to the realization that previous recommendations were based on faulty assumptions. The majority were based on broad population-based epidemiological studies that do not take into account differences in individual responses to nutrients. The future of nutrition-related research will focus on recommendations based on genetic profiles. The food industry will likely follow with grocery isles filled with foods matched to our phenotypes. All of which will make navigating a program of research through the labyrinth of nutritional recommendations an exciting, ongoing challenge.