What is
Nutrition Informatics
What is Nutrition Informatics?
- Nutrition Informatics (NI) describes the intersection of nutrition, information, and technology, and it underlies all areas of dietetics practice.
- Focus on development of standards, processes, and technologies for providing nutrition care.
Inform data driven, evidence based, human centered design, development, implementation and evaluation of nutrition informatics interventions, programs and policies to enhance good health and well-being of individuals, their families and the communities they live in.
Focus Areas
Quick Bites
Focus Areas
Our focus is to design, develop, implement and evaluate innovative informatics interventions to promote positive changes in diets and physical activity, interventions to stimulate agro-food system innovation to increase their affordability, and social behavioral interventions to modify unhealthy lifestyle behavior. Scientific innovation, knowledge systems, community engagement, digital tools, and data-driven management can help tackle this issue.
Maternal undernutrition is a critical public health problem. For e.g. in India one in four women in the reproductive age reported to be underweight. Maternal undernutrition leads to low birth weight (LBW) and LBW children grow as undernourished stunted children. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic poses an increased threat to maternal and child undernutrition, and compels us to reflect on the causes of maternal and child nutrition, and reaffirm the focus to improve the status.
Food security entails ensuring adequate food supply to people, especially those who are deprived of basic nutrition. Food insecurity remains a global issue. It is a significant issue to both developed and developing countries. Achieving food security goal necessitates emphasizing nutrition in all four pillars of food security targeting policies, designs, and interventions fostering nutrition-sensitive agriculture, driving economic prosperity, and promoting food systems that prioritize access to safe, nutritious, sufficient, and high-quality food for all.
The dual burden of underweight and overweight/obesity is alarming and urgent public health measures need to be considered along with data driven evidence based policy initiatives. It is necessary to understand the existence of the dual burden of undernutrition and overnutrition among populations living in diverse settings due to unequal patterns of economic development, and demographic and epidemiological transitions occurring differently across different regions.
Addressing the prevention and management of non-communicable diseases is a critical challenge for healthcare systems worldwide. As per the World Health Organization, about three-quarters of all deaths globally are caused by NCDs, of which the majority are in low- and middle-income group countries. Genetic, physiological, environmental, and behavioural factors often influence these typically long lasting diseases.
Quick Bites
- In 2024, 8.2 percent i.e. nearly 673 million people faced hunger globally.
1 in every 11 people in the world is hungry.
- An estimated 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday in 2024.
Healthy diets are out of reach for 2.60 billion people.
1 in 8 people is living with obesity.
Last updated: April 9, 2026
Sources:
- https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/progress-reducing-child-deaths-slows-49-million-children-under-five-die-2024
- https://doi.org/10.4060/cd1254en, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight