Expertise in nutrition    

Nutrition research in Finland is internationally recognized at a high level. Public health nutrition research regularly follows food consumption and its alternations among the population.

Unique in Finland is the fruitful possibility to connect food and nutrition data to precise health data that is also regularly collected from the population. Furthermore, there is cumulative expertise in Finland to carry out small and large-scale nutrition intervention trials.

The research focus has often been on the prevention and treatment of different diseases, where nutrition and eating habits have an important role. The National Nutrition Council in Finland composes the nutrition recommendations. The latest recommendation of 2005 emphasises the balance between nutrition and exercise.

Nutrigenomic is becoming an interesting area in increasing the knowledge of human nutritional needs. Finland is active in conducting studies on human genomic and its relationship to different diseases connected to nutrition. There is a pioneering study running about the link between genes and nutrition on the effect of a cereal-rich diet among people at risk of diabetes.