Life-Course Nutrition and Healthy Aging

Nutrition across the life course is a fundamental determinant of healthy aging, influencing growth, development, functional capacity, and the risk of non-communicable diseases. From early-life exposures to dietary behaviors in adulthood and older age, nutrition has cumulative and dynamic effects on health trajectories, directly shaping aging processes and health inequalities. As population aging accelerates worldwide, there is increasing urgency to identify nutritional strategies that can support healthy aging, prevent functional decline, and reduce the burden of chronic disease. At the same time, the expanding availability of nationally representative dietary data and advances in nutritional epidemiology have created new opportunities to examine these issues from a public health perspective. However, evidence remains fragmented across life stages, limiting a more integrated understanding of how dietary exposures across the life course influence aging outcomes.The goal of this Research Topic is to advance a life-course approach to nutrition explicitly oriented toward healthy aging in public health. It aims to bring together evidence on how nutritional exposures at different stages of life contribute to long-term health trajectories, functional capacity, and aging-related outcomes. In particular, this Topic seeks to address the current gap between life-stage-specific findings and broader, integrated models of healthy aging. Special attention is given to social inequities and vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by poor diet quality and unhealthy aging trajectories.We welcome contributions that explore both determinants and solutions. This includes studies examining dietary patterns, diet quality, food processing, and nutritional risk across the life course, as well as research addressing the role of social determinants, food environments, and structural inequalities. We also encourage submissions that apply recent methodological advances, including longitudinal analyses, complex survey data, innovative dietary assessment methods, and life-course analytical approaches. By connecting epidemiological evidence with interventions, implementation strategies, and public policy, this Research Topic aims to support effective, scalable, and equitable approaches to promote healthy aging at the population level. The Topic also seeks to promote translational perspectives capable of informing scalable and sustainable public health actions.Suitable themes for manuscripts include, but are not limited to:• Life-course nutrition and its role in healthy aging;• Dietary patterns and diet quality across different stages of life;• Sustainable dietary patterns and their implications for healthy aging and public health;• Early-life nutrition and long-term aging-related outcomes;• Nutrition and aging-related conditions, including frailty, sarcopenia, and functional decline;• Food processing, dietary patterns, and long-term public health implications;• Social and environmental determinants of diet across the life course;• Food environments, access to healthy foods, and health inequalities;• Public policies, interventions, and implementation strategies to promote healthy aging;• Translation of nutritional evidence into public health practice and policy;• National dietary surveys, population-based analyses, and methodological advances in nutritional epidemiology;• Qualitative studies addressing health and nutrition issues from a life-cycle perspective. Topic editors: Flávia Dos Santos Barbosa Brito, Débora Martins Dos Santos, Carla Gonçalves, Amanda Rodrigues Amorim Adegboye Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82773/life-course-nutrition-and-healthy-aging