Nutrients | Season’s Greetings from Editorial Board Members

Video message from the Editor-in-Chief of Nutrients (ISSN: 2072-6643) and the Section Editors-in-Chief:

Prof. Dr. Federica I. Wolf Editor-in-Chief of the “Micronutrients and Human Health” Section

Dear readers,

Notwithstanding the viral storm that has blasted the world over the last two years, we are here to talk about science, ready to start the new year with unfailing enthusiasm. 

It has been a difficult time for us all. Both our work environments and our social lives have been greatly affected, and we have experienced an unprecedented feeling of social isolation and restraint, as well as anxiety for the future of ourselves and the whole community.

Fortunately, we were blessed by the might of the web, which has helped us in the face of so many difficulties. We have learned how to explore and communicate in a virtual world—slang such as call and link and tele-this or tele-that has penetrated our language and become our leitmotiv to survive isolation and loneliness. This could not in any way compensate for the collapse of personal interactions, but it removed what was initially perceived as an insurmountable wall between us and the others, helping us to realize we were not alone after all. In looking back at the last two years, we might conclude that the Sars-Cov2 pandemic changed our lifestyle and made our days less frantic and neurotic. We suddenly found ourselves with plenty of time for thinking, putting ideas together, and brainstorming in the search for new scientific avenues.

In reviewing how the scientific literature embraced thousands of solid or naïve reports on the evil virus, I have the impression that we never stopped conducting science. Looking at how our journal faired during the pandemic, it is clear that our authors faced the challenges presented to them head on and broadened their focus on what a healthy lifestyle means. We all became, more than ever, aware of the importance of nutrition as a preventive or curative indispensable strategy. As a result, nutrition research is stronger than before and represents a unique arena to welcome translational collaborations and efforts to fight COVID-19. More importantly, nutrition research has become a flagship of a revitalized interest in life and the environment.

I wish you all a healthy and fruitful 2022!

Prof. Dr. Yvan Vandenplas Editor-in-Chief of the “Pediatric Nutrition” Section

The whole team in “Pediatric Nutrition” wishes all co-workers and authors a very happy 2022 and we thank you for your devotion and interest.

Dr. Javier Gómez-Ambrosi Editor-in-Chief of the “Nutrition and Obesity” Section Co-Editor-in-Chief of the “Nutrition and Diabetes” Section

On behalf of the Editorial Office of Nutrients we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Nutrients’ authors, readers, Editorial Board members, and reviewers, thanking them for their kind and continued participation in the journal in 2021.

This year, we have published many relevant findings in the field of human nutrition. For example, several important papers have highlighted the role of vitamin D in reducing the severity and mortality rate of COVID-19, or other factors such as vitamin K or zinc, and how the pandemic has changed the dietary habits and physical activity due to lockdowns. Nutrients has also published studies demonstrating the positive health effects of nuts and coffee and has reviewed the benefits of fasting and its application. We have also seen research concerning meta-analysis, showing that animal protein tends to be more beneficial for lean mass than plant protein, a work suggesting that a ketogenic low-carbohydrate high-fat diet induces a deleterious blood lipid profile, and an innovative study using a metagenomics and metabolomics approach to show how western and Mediterranean diets differently affect gut microbiota metabolism. Finally, some studies have also shed more light on controversial topics such as the effects of the consumption of potatoes and saturated fats on health.

In 2021, the impact factor of Nutrients has increased to 5.719 and thanks to all the excellent papers we have published in 2021, we expect to further increase the impact of Nutrients in 2022.

We wish you a very happy new year, and we welcome submissions of even more excellent articles in 2022.

Prof. Dr. David C. Nieman Editor-in-Chief of the “Sport Nutrition” Section

Wishing you health and happiness in the New Year ahead.

Sports nutrition is a rapidly expanding area of scientific investigation. The interaction of exercise and nutrition is compelling and complex. Advances in measurement technologies have allowed hundreds of metabolites, proteins, lipids, and genes to be measured simultaneously. This approach has improved the capacity to provide accurate and practical guidelines for athletes. The “Sports Nutrition” Section of the journal Nutrients is devoted to advancing scientific understanding, and I encourage you to send us your best papers in 2022.

Prof. Dr. Yan Chen Editorial Board Member in Nutrients

Wish for Nutrients to be nutritious and important to all fields of biological research.

Prof. Dr. Gloria Lena Vega Editor-in-Chief of the “Nutrition and Metabolism” Section

Dear readers,

Congratulations to all those who contributed to this year’s “Nutrition and Metabolism” Section and to our supportive readers and editorial staff. We were pleased to receive very informative manuscripts on diverse topics. The Section published about 400 manuscripts representing the scientific activities of researchers and scholars from the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The scope of the science is broad reflecting the many aspects of nutrition and metabolism research being conducted in well-established research centers.

We look forward to your continued support by submitting reviews, original research, and/or editorials on topics that are of greatest importance to nutrition and metabolism. In these challenging times of the pandemic, scientists are to be commended for their resilience and commitment to their work. As we learn to navigate the present health challenge, we anticipate additional submissions on new aspects of the role of the immune system in metabolism and new strategies to enhance immunity through nutrition. We encourage you to continue to submit your research findings to this section next year. We urge you to encourage your fellows and students to publish their thesis work and to use this forum as a key resource of innovative research in nutrition and metabolism.

We extend to our readership, authors, and very able editorial staff best wishes for a productive 2022 and for better control of the healthcare challenges we confront worldwide.

Prof. Dr. Luis A. Moreno Editor-in-Chief of the “Nutritional Epidemiology” Section

Dear readers,

On behalf of the “Nutrition Epidemiology” Section of our journal Nutrients, we wish all authors and readers a happy Christmas time and a scientifically productive 2022, with our best wishes for your personal and familial life.

Prof. Dr. Ina Bergheim Editor-in-Chief of the “Clinical Nutrition” Section

Dear readers and authors,

The last two years have been very challenging to all of us. People all over the world lost loved ones and many suffered economic hardship. Even though the pandemic is not over, it is thanks to the outstandingly fast development of COVID-19 vaccines that many of us will be able to meet friends and family in this holiday season and hopefully lead a more normal life in 2022. Therefore, I would like to take the opportunity to send a word of gratitude to our fellow scientists who worked hard to develop the COVID-19 vaccines.

Additionally, I would also like to take the opportunity to thank you, the readers and the authors, for following Nutrients and for publishing more than 400 excellent original manuscripts and review articles this year in the “Clinical Nutrition” Section. Indeed, if I look at the many submissions and manuscripts published in this Section, but also the journal in general throughout the past year, I have the impression we never stopped engaging with science, and that nutrition research is an ever-developing discipline being one of the keys to a healthy life.

Happy Holidays to everyone and a healthy and fruitful 2022!

Prof. Dr. Kimber L. Stanhope Editor-in-Chief of the “Carbohydrates” Section

As we near the end of another challenging year, a Season’s Greeting full of enthusiasm for the progress we have made in the world of nutrition research and optimism for our future progress is the order of the day. It is easy for me to be enthusiastic about progress. I was lucky to stumble on a research path that has made particularly impressive progress during the last two decades—the metabolic effects of added sugar consumption. I assess this progress starting in 2001 with our NIH summary statement for our first R01 proposal to conduct a well-controlled dietary intervention study on the metabolic effects of fructose and glucose. A reviewer panned our hypothesis that fructose consumption increased risk factors for CVD, stating that it had already been disproven 30 years ago when it was proposed by John Yudkin (eventually, and luckily, we got funded anyway). Fast forward to 2015, reviewers of our new proposals were questioning the need for any more dietary intervention studies on added sugar. Specifically, one reviewer wrote that everyone, except those associated with the sugar industries, knows that the consumption of sugar is bad for health. While the comment is arguable, specifically concerning the “everyone knows” part, it certainly suggests a lot of results were generated and a lot of learning occurred in only 13 years! We can also reasonably claim that the change in the 2015 US Dietary Guideline for the upper limit of added sugar consumption is indicative of outstanding progress; down from 25% of daily energy to 10% of daily energy. However, the U.S. per capita consumption of added sugar (sucrose plus HFCS) has only decreased 17% since 2002 (from 350 to 292 Kcal/day), therefore the average level of added sugar consumption in the U.S. is still closer to 15% of daily energy than 10%. Furthermore, the decrease consisted of solely high fructose corn syrup (HFCS); sucrose intake has increased by 16 kcal/day since 2002. (Nutrition educators, please broadcast the finding of our latest publication: Liver fat, insulin resistance, circulating lipids/lipoproteins, and uric acid are significantly increased by consumption of sucrose, and the increases are comparable to those caused by consumption of HFCS.)

Clearly, we need to keep adding to the evidence base that demonstrates that the refined Western diet is a mediator of chronic disease, ensure that the evidence is translated to dietary advice and education for the public, and develop and test new strategies that will promote dietary change. Does my enthusiasm for our recent progress on the topic of added sugar translate to optimism that we can make equally impressive progress on the goals stated above? I am not sure. I worry that the challenge of obtaining funding to conduct a clinical dietary intervention study, the gold standard of nutrition research, has sky-rocketed alarmingly during the last decade. The researcher must not only meet the NIH standards for being significant and innovative (a challenge in itself), but many reviewers are judging the study design (approach) based on the same standards set for evidence-based medicine. These evidence-based medicine standards for sample size, duration, direct disease outcomes, blinding, control of confounding variables, and compliance monitoring are achievable for a Phase III drug study, for practical, ethical, and methodological reasons, they are not realistic standards for clinical dietary intervention studies.

Furthermore, I think summary statements from my recent unfunded NIH proposals illustrate additional challenges that face nutrition researchers who are seeking funding for clinical dietary intervention studies. For example, in the same summary statement, two reviewers offered completely non-reconcilable critiques of my plan to provide the human subjects with 6 weeks of standardized meals and beverages prepared in our metabolic kitchen. The first reviewer described the dietary protocol as a weakness as it “...is so tightly controlled it is unclear how generalizable these findings will be”; the second reviewer described the dietary protocol as a weakness as the subjects “are not brought into a monitored or controlled setting” for meal consumption, thus may cheat.

I was also disconcerted when a reviewer of my most recent unfunded proposal stated that it was unclear how elucidating the mechanism between consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain would result in public health policy to reduce the availability of SSB. It is the objective of nearly all dietary intervention studies to generate results that will influence public health policy. While many of us researchers put substantial effort into trying to ensure our published results have an impact, the role of translating research evidence into public health policy belongs to others specifically trained for this. Luckily, more and more of our young people are embracing this role, and from 1992 to 2016 the number of post-graduate degrees conferred in public health has more than tripled.

One of the hurdles that the current and future public health advocates have to deal with in their efforts to impact dietary policy is gaps in the evidence base. Filling these gaps is our role, and it takes three types of studies to do this: 1. The observational studies that can show associations between dietary components and health or disease; 2. The basic animal research that can demonstrate causal mechanism between dietary components and health or disease; and 3. Clinical dietary intervention studies to test the relevance of the mechanisms in humans using surrogate markers of health and disease. With all three, we will arm the public health advocates with the best possible evidence base. Therefore, we have to work to ensure that unrealistic standards do not impede the conduct of clinical dietary intervention studies. Dietary intervention studies will never test CVD or diabetes as outcomes, only their surrogates. They will never have sample sizes or durations to rival Phase III drug studies. If they use a free-living/free-choice dietary protocol, the results are subject to confounding by other dietary variables. If they use the standardized dietary protocol in which subjects are confined to consuming only the study diet, mis-compliance is still possible and the results may not be generalizable to real-world diets. While it may be my fantasy, it is not possible, even with unlimited funding, to conduct a dietary intervention study that will not have limitations and that will single-handedly impact dietary policy and consumer behavior. This must not become an excuse not to conduct them. Let us work together to ensure that it does not!

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Prof. Dr. Guansheng Ma Editorial Board Member in Nutrients

As the pandemic continues to rage around the world in 2021, nutrition research is still being conducted, despite the impact. To fight against COVID-19, the link between vitamin D, zinc, polyphenols, other nutrients and resistance to infection and immune function has received particular attention. The results of these studies have shown that adequate and appropriate intake of nutrition is essential for strengthening immunity and preventing the infection of COVID-19. Investigations have concluded that quarantine does changes dietary behavior and physical activity, eventually impacting the health of the population. Nutrition and healthy aging, food allergies, mechanisms and effects of dietary factors on chronic diseases are the focus of research; moreover, the food environment, food systems, low carbon and sustainability are the focus of researchers.

In the coming year, 2022, as researchers, our scientific research in nutrition and health will never stop. We will continue to make new advances in our own research fields in order to benefit both mankind and nature.

Happy Holidays! I wish you all a healthy and fruitful 2022!