Cattle as climate killers or valuable protein source? (Photo: Kützemeier)
26
NUTRITION
Nutritional trends
Where will the future take us?
›Authors:
Petra Wiedmer1, phone:+49(0)33200.88-2245, email: petra.wiedmer@dife.de and
Tilman Grune1,2, phone: +49(0)033200 88-2216, email: scientific.director@dife.de
1German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke, 14558 Nuthetal, Germany
2University of Potsdam, Institute of Nutritional Science, 14558 Nuthetal, Germany
Currently, nutrition is a huge field of innovation
and of high public interest. Digital progression,
new eating trends as well as altered attitudes
and personal perception towards nutrition, diet, food,
production processes, and environment are driving
this development. All visions and proposed trends
for the future of food production and nutrition are
highly individual but are influenced by research findings,
food enterprises, counselling companies, and
consumer associations. However, there are common
features identified by most of them: Our eating behaviour
will be determined by ethical virtues such as
organic, sustainable, and fair production and sale, use
of high quality ingredients as well as regional origin
of the food. Also, by taking advantage of innovations
in digitalization, personal optimization of eating and
lifestyle for reaching optimal physical fitness, in a society
built on the pressure to perform, is expected to
rule our future behaviour. In the contrary, also trends
of less consciousness-driven eating styles being in contrast
to the ethics-driven eating behaviour mentioned
above are expected to occur. They might be characterized
by the desire for simple accessibility of food,
which satiates and can be provided easily and quickly.
But also slow food-related trends are expected such
as own and fresh preparation of meals combined with
conscious and joint consumption of food as part of a
healthy and balanced diet and lifestyle. In this minireview
we will introduce some of these trends in more
detail using nutrition for the elderly as an example.
What is currently relevant for
adequate nutrition of the elderly?
Aging is an inexorable process characterized by physiological
changes normally occurring and cumulating
with longer lifetime. The chronological appearance of
age-related changes, however, individually depends
on genetic imprinting and environmental factors such
as nutrition and lifestyle. The decline in muscle mass
and muscle function (sarcopenia) is a prominent feature
in older age and it is often accompanied by a parallel
increase in adipose tissue (sarcopenic obesity, 1).