For some 20 years, science funding bodies have been asking for the integration of sex- and gender-related factors into the content of research and innovation. The rationale for those requirements has been the accumulated evidence that sex and gender are important determinants of health and disease. The European Commission (EC) has been the first, since 2002, to seriously ask for the integration of sex and gender into research and innovation in the context of their multi-annual framework programmes. When introduced, this condition was not immediately applauded by the research community, who perhaps lacked training in methods for the integration of sex- and gender-related factors. The EC Expert Group on Gendered Innovations sought to fill this gap. This review describes the work of this international collaborative project which has resulted in the development of general and field-specific methods for sex and gender analysis and 38 case studies for various research domains (science, health and medicine, environment, engineering) to illustrate how, by applying methods of sex and gender analysis, new knowledge could be created. Since 2010, science funding bodies in Canada, the USA and several EU member states have followed the example of the EC issuing similar conditions. Although the effects of nutritional patterns on a range of (physiological and health) outcomes may differ for men and women, sex and gender analyses are rarely conducted in nutrition research. In this review, we provide examples of how gender is connected to dietary intake, and how advancing gender analysis may inform gender-sensitive policies and dietary recommendations.

Accurate determination of fruit and vegetable consumption is essential for research that seeks to determine current fruit and vegetable intake patterns, what type and amount of fruit and vegetable consumption is optimal for human health and for evaluating interventions developed to increase such consumption. However, there are many issues that make accurate determination of fruit and vegetable consumption quite difficult. There are many methods used to measure fruit and vegetable intake, but all have limitations. Also, what foods individuals consider to be or to not be fruits or vegetables appear to be quite variable, with such variability often associated with the individual's racial/ethnic background. Researchers and governmental agencies vary with respect to what foods they include and do not include when calculating fruit and vegetable intake. These differences make it difficult to conduct, evaluate and compare studies in this area. The current paper reviews some of the major issues with measuring and determining fruit and vegetable intake.

The UK Food Standards Agency convened a group of expert scientists to review current research investigating folate bioavailability. The workshop aimed to overview current research and establish priorities for future research. Discrepancies were observed in the evidence base for folate bioavailability, especially with regard to the relative bioavailability of natural folates compared with folic acid. A substantial body of evidence shows folic acid to have superior bioavailability relative to food folates; however, the exact relative bioavailability still needs to be determined, and in particular with regard to mixed diets. The bioavailability of folate in a mixed diet is probably not a weighted average of that in the various foods consumed; thus the workshop considered that assessment of folate bioavailability of whole diets should be a high priority for future research.

The UK Food Standards Agency convened a group of expert scientists to review current research investigating whether n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) from plant oils (α-linolenic acid; ALA) were as beneficial to cardiovascular health as the n-3 PUFA from the marine oils, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). The workshop also aimed to establish priorities for future research. Dietary intake of ALA has been associated with a beneficial effect on CHD; however, the results from studies investigating the effects of ALA supplementation on CHD risk factors have proved equivocal. The studies presented as part of the present workshop suggested little, if any, benefit of ALA, relative to linoleic acid, on risk factors for cardiovascular disease; the effects observed with fish-oil supplementation were not replicated by ALA supplementation. There is a need, therefore, to first prove the efficacy of ALA supplementation on cardiovascular disease, before further investigating effects on cardiovascular risk factors. The workshop considered that a beneficial effect of ALA on the secondary prevention of CHD still needed to be established, and there was no reason to look further at existing CHD risk factors in relation to ALA supplementation. The workshop also highlighted the possibility of feeding livestock ALA-rich oils to provide a means of increasing the dietary intake in human consumers of EPA and DHA.

A huge number of genes within the human genome code for proteins that mediate and/or control nutritional processes. Although a large body of information on the number of genes, on chromosomal localisation, gene structure and function has been gathered, we are far from understanding the orchestrated way of how they make metabolism. Nevertheless, based on the genetic information emerging on a daily basis, we are offered fantastic new tools that allow us new insights into the molecular basis of human metabolism under normal as well as pathophysiological conditions. Recent technological advancements have made it possible to analyse simultaneously large sets of mRNA and/or proteins expressed in a biological sample or to define genetic heterogeneity that may be important for the individual response of an organism to changes in its nutritional environment. Applications of the new techniques of genome and proteome analysis are central for the development of nutritional sciences in the next decade and its integration into the rapidly developing era of functional genomics.