Understanding how food and beverages deliver improved nutrition across the lifecourse

随着年龄的增长，身体的功能会下降。这对他们的肌肉、骨骼和认知能力来说是最明显的，但新陈代谢和免疫力下降，以及许多其他身体结构和功能。由于这种功能的下降影响了老年人的健康和福祉，我们称这种变化为不健康的老龄化。相反，我们希望促进健康老龄化，因为这意味着老年人保持健康。随着年龄的增长，饮食在影响我们身体系统衰退的速度方面非常重要。此外，我们现在知道，人们年轻时发生的事情，甚至在他们出生前或婴儿时期发生的事情，不仅会影响他们在婴儿或儿童时期的健康，而且会延续到以后的生活中。事实上，早期生活事件可以影响我们显示衰老功能衰退的速度。同样，饮食也很重要。孕妇或哺乳期妇女的饮食以及婴儿和儿童的饮食不仅具有直接影响，而且具有长期影响。因此，我们早期的饮食习惯为我们以后的生活打下了基础。我们需要更多地了解一个人一生中的饮食习惯对他们生长、发育和功能的影响，以及随着年龄的增长，他们的功能下降的速度。一旦我们对此有了更多的了解，我们就可以采取措施确保人们吃最好的食物和膳食，以确保健康的衰老。要做到这一点，我们需要研究膳食，个别食物和饮料，以及特定的营养素和食物的其他成分对整个生命过程中身体的影响。为了实现这一目标，了解营养如何影响身体的科学家必须与生产人们食用的食品的行业更密切地合作。最后，我们需要让这些食物更健康。要做到这一点，我们需要进行研究，以便我们知道在生命过程的不同阶段什么是健康的，也要知道不同的人对不同的食物和食物成分的反应是否更好（或更差）。我们计划建立一系列伙伴关系，将大学研究人员与工业界人士联系起来，促进更好的合作，以便他们能够开展所需的研究。我们的最终目标是创建我们所谓的“创新中心”，使学术研究人员和行业能够进行合作研究，最终导致行业为消费者提供更健康的食品，从而促进整个生命周期的健康，包括老年人。为了做到这一点，我们将在五年内每年向研究人员-行业伙伴关系分配研究资金。在某些情况下，工业界也需要投入资金进行研究。为了建立伙伴关系，我们将举办研讨会，让研究人员和工业界能够建立网络并讨论他们的想法。一旦资金被授予研究，我们将确保研究尽可能顺利进行。我们分配的一些资金将用于大学的研究人员在工业界度过一段时间，或者用于工业界的人与大学的研究人员共度一段时间。这些资金将对处于职业生涯早期阶段的研究人员非常有吸引力。他们将真正受益于交流知识，获得新技能和新的工作经验。这些东西可能对他们的职业生涯有很大的好处。通过这种方式，我们希望创造一支技能更好、知识更渊博、更敬业的劳动力队伍，以开展重要的研究，这将使工业界有机会拥有更健康的产品，并使人口随着年龄的增长而更加健康。

As people age the ability of their body to function can decline. This is most obvious for their muscles and bones and cognition but metabolism and immunity decline as well as do a lot of other body structures and functions. Because this decline in function worsens older people's health and well-being, we call the changes unhealthy ageing. Instead of this, we want to promote healthy ageing, because that means older people stay well. Diet is really important in affecting how fast our body's systems decline as we age. In addition, we now know that things that happen to people when they are young, even before they are born or when they are babies, not only affect their health when they are infants or children, but can carry over into later life. In fact, early life events can influence how fast we show the functional decline of ageing. Again, diet turns out to be really important. The diet of a woman when she is pregnant or breastfeeding and the diet of babies and children not only has immediate effects but has a long-lasting effect. So our early diet sets us up for what happens later on. We need to know more about the influence of a person's diet throughout their whole life on how well they grow, develop and function and then how quickly their function declines as they age. Once we know more about this, we can take steps to make sure that people eat the best foods and meals to ensure heathy ageing. To do this we need to study the effect of meals, individual foods and drinks, and specific nutrients and other components of foods on the body right across the lifecourse. To enable that to happen, scientists who understand how nutrition affects the body have to work more closely with industry who produce the foods that people eat. Ultimately, we need to make these foods more healthy. To do that, we need to carry out research so we know what is healthy at different stages of the lifecourse and also to know whether different people actually respond better (or worse) to different foods and food components. We plan to set up a series of partnerships linking researchers from universities with people from industry to foster better working together so that they can carry out the required research. Our ultimate aim is to create what we call an "Innovation Hub" that enables collaborative research involving academic researchers and industry that will in the end result in industry providing more healthful foods to the consumer, so promoting health across the lifecourse including in older age. To do this each year for five years we will distribute funds for research to researcher-industry partnerships. In some cases, industry will also need to put money into the research. So that the partnerships can be created, we will host workshops where researchers and industry can network and discuss their ideas. Once the funds are awarded for research, we will make sure that the research goes as well as it can. Some of the funds we distribute will be for researchers from universities to spend time in industry or for people from industry to spend time with a researcher at a university. These funds will be very appealing to researchers at an early stage in their career. They will really benefit from exchanging knowledge, getting new skills and having new work-place experiences. These things could be of huge benefit to their career. In this way, we hope to create a better skilled, more knowledgeable and engaged work force to carry out important research that will both give industry the opportunity to have more healthy products and enable the population to be more healthy as they age.