Nutritional Epidemiology in Times of Crisis: Diet Quality, Food Insecurity, and Health Across the Life Course

Nutritional epidemiology explores the relationships between diet, nutrition, and health outcomes within populations, providing critical insights into how macro-level disruptions shape individual and community well-being. In recent years, global crises, such as pandemics, climate-related disasters, economic instability, armed conflicts, and forced displacement, have profoundly disrupted food systems, altered dietary behaviors, and intensified pre-existing disparities in nutritional health. These crises often exact a disproportionate toll on vulnerable groups, spanning socioeconomic divides and distinct stages of the life course. Despite growing evidence on the impact of crises on diet and food security, significant knowledge gaps remain regarding how these challenges manifest and persist within and across populations, as well as the effectiveness of interventions aiming to buffer their adverse health consequences.The evolving literature highlights a need for granular, life course–oriented research that integrates methodological advances with context-specific data, enabling the identification of both immediate and long-term health trajectories associated with disrupted nutrition. Recent studies have begun to document changes in diet quality, nutrient intakes, and food insecurity patterns during various crises, and have explored how these factors interact with social determinants and policy responses. However, existing research is often limited by methodological constraints such as rapidly changing exposure environments, challenges in dietary assessment, and insufficient integration of structural determinants. Robust evidence on interventions across diverse populations, as well as innovative approaches for measuring crisis-related nutritional changes, remains limited but essential for informing practice and policy.This Research Topic aims to advance understanding of how crises affect diet quality, the development and persistence of food insecurity, and the downstream health outcomes across the life course. It invites scholarship that unpacks the conceptual, methodological, and empirical dimensions of nutritional challenges during unstable times, and probes solutions for ameliorating their impacts. Specific objectives include clarifying how diverse crises shape food security and diet from preconception through old age, identifying vulnerable and resilient populations, evaluating effective interventions, and critically appraising methodological innovations in crisis-responsive nutritional research.To gather further insights within the boundaries of nutritional epidemiology during crises, including, but not limited to, pandemics, conflict, economic shocks, and disasters. We welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:o Conceptual and methodological advances in crisis-related nutritional epidemiologyo Early-life nutrition, from preconception to the first 1,000 days, during times of crisiso Diet quality, food insecurity, and developmental outcomes for children and adolescentso Health impacts and dietary adaptations among working-age adults and older populations in crisis settingso Structural determinants, policies, inequities, and their roles in shaping nutritional outcomeso Assessment, evaluation, and scalability of interventions and programs to mitigate nutritional risks during criseso Measurement innovations and integration of food security and diet quality assessment tools o Life-course and equity perspectives on crisis-related nutritional challenges Topic editors: Maha Hoteit, Begüm Kalyoncu Atasoy, Hatice Merve Bayram, Saniye Sozlu Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/77104/nutritional-epidemiology-in-times-of-crisis-diet-quality-food-insecurity-and-health-across-the-life-course