The “Agriculture and Diet: Value Added for Nutrition, Translation, and Adaptation in a Global Ecology” (ADVANTAGE) Project: An Overview of an Integrated Approach to Address a Complex Challenge

The concept of a nutritional ecology recognizes nutrition as representing a complex biological system that interacts with both internal factors (i.e., genetics, health, and age) and external factors (i.e., food systems, social determinants of health, and physical environments). The objective of the "Agriculture and Diet: Value Added for Nutrition, Translation, and Adaptation in a Global Ecology" (ADVANTAGE) Project is to employ an ecological approach to understand factors that influence interactions at the nexus of food systems, diet, and health, including the emerging impacts of climate/environmental change (CEC). The ADVANTAGE Project is envisioned to add value to the historical focus on sustainable food systems by emphasizing the role of sustainable nutrition and its ecology. This emphasis will be used in the analyses needed to support the development and promulgation of evidence-informed interventions, guidance, and policy intended to address diet and health in a changing environment. Functionally, ADVANTAGE was designed to identify the extant evidence and gaps that need to be filled to inform these efforts by convening 5 working groups to address the: 1) the implications of CEC on priority diet-related health outcomes; 2) the impact of CEC on dietary patterns and choices; 3) the interactions between CEC and food systems; 4) methodologies/metrics to better understand the intersection of CEC, food systems, nutrition, and health; and 5) frameworks for translating and implementing new evidence and approaches to support context-specific safe and efficacious interventions, dietary guidance, and standards of care. This report presents the justification and conceptual approach underpinning the ADVANTAGE project.