Nourishing Australia: A decadal plan for the science of nutrition

The science of nutrition is entering an exciting era, with recent advances in measurement technologies, policy insights and complex data analysis, coupled with new theory frameworks that offer a promise of tackling many complex scientific and pressing societal challenges in which food and nutrition play a central role. This decadal plan sets out a strategy for realising the vision that Australian nutrition science plays a key role in improving long-term health and wellbeing globally, while delivering environmental, social and economic benefits nationally with core values of equity, sustainability, collaboration and innovation.

The plan is aspirational and further consultation is needed prior to implementation. Successful implementation is expected to result in health, wellbeing and economic benefits, including:

• reduced burden of chronic diseases from increased nutrition literacy, and greater understanding of cause-and-effect mechanisms linking dietary patterns to health and disease
• cost-effective, equitable population health initiatives developed from accurate knowledge of current diet–health relationships and addressing societal and commercial factors
• improved diets leading to increased physical and mental health
• nutrition credentials that will drive a premium agrifood sector, particularly for exports
• growth of a ‘nutritech’ sector that provides software, hardware, analysis and commercial services to support a healthy and sustainable food and health system
• helping to achieve global targets such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This plan was produced by the National Committee for Nutrition with generous funding from the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Learned Academies Special Projects scheme.