Nutritional Epidemiology and Body Weight Trends
Summary
Nutritional epidemiology examines the relationships between dietary exposures and health outcomes at the population level, with a particular focus on body weight trends as an indicator of both undernutrition and overnutrition. Over recent decades, shifts in food environments, socioeconomic factors and lifestyle behaviours have driven heterogeneous trajectories in body mass index (BMI), obesity prevalence and micronutrient status across age groups and regions. Advances in large-scale surveys, system-dynamics modelling and spatiotemporal analyses have enriched our understanding of how secular trends in energy intake, macronutrient balance and dietary patterns contribute to weight gain or loss. This field now integrates refined dietary assessment methods, biomarker calibration and cohort designs to identify critical windows of growth, gender-specific risk profiles and subnational disparities. The global significance of these findings lies in informing targeted prevention strategies, shaping national nutrition policies and guiding fortification or supplementation programmes to curb both the rising tide of chronic disease and persistent micronutrient deficiencies.
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Nutritional Epidemiology and Body Weight Trends publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in nutritional epidemiology and body weight trends across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Body mass index (BMI): A ratio of weight to height squared (kg/m²) used to categorise underweight, normal weight, overweight and obesity.
Energy imbalance gap: The average daily difference between energy intake and energy expenditure that drives weight change over time.
Cohort study: A longitudinal research design following a defined group of individuals over time to assess exposure–outcome relationships.
Dietary record: A method of dietary assessment in which individuals document all foods and beverages consumed during a specified period, often using weighed measurements.
References
- Trends in Mean Energy and Nutrient Intakes in Japanese Children and Adolescents: The National Health and Nutrition Survey, 1995–2019. Nutrients (2023).
- Trends of Dietary Intakes and Metabolic Diseases in Japanese Adults: Assessment of National Health Promotion Policy and National Health and Nutrition Survey 1995–2019. Journal of Clinical Medicine (2022).
- Trends in Energy Imbalance Gap and Body Weight Status in the Japanese Adult Population: A System Dynamics Approach. Journal of Epidemiology (2020).
- Trends and Disparities in Adult Body Mass Index Across the 47 Prefectures of Japan, 1975–2018: A Bayesian Spatiotemporal Analysis of National Household Surveys. Frontiers in Public Health (2022).
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