Achievements, Challenges, and Future Direction in Early Life Nutrition

Micronutrient deficiencies occur in most countries across the world, with classical undernutrition, low-nutrient-content diets, and even overnutrition with diets rich in energy but poor in micronutrients all contributing to poor nutritional status. This review starts with an overview of nutrient requirements and the associated dietary recommendations, which contribute to health across the lifespan. These recommendations aim to prevent deficiency diseases in all age groups, to achieve optimal growth and development in childhood and adolescence, and to maintain health during adulthood. However, these recommendations do not include all potential components of the diet, do not adequately cover the variations in requirements between individuals and ethnic groups, and focus mainly on undernutrition without much attention to the increasing problem of overnutrition. The recommendations are focused on individual nutrients and based on the assumption that all other nutrients in the diet are being consumed in adequate amounts. Clearly for many countries this is not the case, as a wide range of nutrient inadequacies are present in the groups experiencing major undernutrition.