Nutritional epidemiology is the study of the relationship between aspects of the diet and occurrence of human illness (1). In the past, advances in nutritional epidemiology have been pivotal in curing and preventing many diseases. For instance, the discovery that lemons and oranges can prevent sailors from having scurvy was incredibly important for voyages across the Atlantic or Pacific. Although past nutritional epidemiological studies have concentrated on nutritional deficiencies, recent literature has focused on nutritional indicators and risk factors for chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease (1). For instance, Funda et al. (2) explored how non-gluten diets may prevent diabetes in mice. We may appreciate how nutritional epidemiology has evolved to match our most pressing concerns for maintaining health and preventing chronic or acute illnesses.
There are many different types of nutritional studies published. Most commonly, studies are observational in nature, and allocation of persons to dietary exposure groups is not under the control of the investigator (1). Instead, the exposure group and comparison group are compared with each other, and allocation of participants to groups are not determined by the experimenter. There are many ethical issues surrounding conducting randomized control trials in nutritional studies, because allocating certain children to receive a diet in higher fat content than another child, or allocating pregnant mothers to a non-dairy diet compared to a diet with dairy content may not be healthy. Therefore, most nutritional epidemiological studies focus on observing people in their normal lives. One of the leading nutritional epidemiologists at McMaster is Dr. Russell de Souza! (3) His research interests involve advancing methodology for systematic reviews and meta-analysis and clinical trials in the field of nutrition (3).
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