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. 2021 Oct 1;12(5):1599-1609.
doi: 10.1093/advances/nmab046.

Perspective: Nutritional Status as a Biological Variable (NABV): Integrating Nutrition Science into Basic and Clinical Research and Care

Daniel J Raiten  1 , Gerald F Combs  2 , Alison L Steiber  3 , Andrew A Bremer  1
Affiliations

Perspective: Nutritional Status as a Biological Variable (NABV): Integrating Nutrition Science into Basic and Clinical Research and Care

Daniel J Raiten et al. Adv Nutr. .

Abstract

The field of nutrition has evolved from one focused primarily on discovery of the identities, metabolic functions, and requirements for essential nutrients to one focused on the application of that knowledge to the development and implementation of dietary recommendations to promote health and prevent disease. This evolution has produced a deeper appreciation of not only the roles of nutrients, but also factors affecting their functions in increasingly complex global health contexts. The intersection of nutrition with an increasingly more complex global health context necessitates a view of nutritional status as a biological variable (NABV), the study of which includes an appreciation that nutritional status is: 1) not limited to dietary exposure; 2) intimately and inextricably involved in all aspects of human health promotion, disease prevention, and treatment; and 3) both an input and an outcome of health and disease. This expanded view of nutrition will inform future research by facilitating considerations of the contexts and variability associated with the many interacting factors affecting and affected by nutritional status. It will also demand new tools to study multifactorial relations to the end of increasing precision and the development of evidence-based, safe, and effective standards of health care, dietary interventions, and public health programs.

Keywords: biological variable; dietary interventions; nutrients; nutrition; nutritional assessment.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The “nutritional ecology” reflecting the interaction of a complex system, in this case the biology of nutritional status, with its biological, physical, and sociopsychological environments (5).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
The diet/nutrition and health continuum.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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