Conference at the Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences

Some months ago, I got the honour of being invited by the Belgian Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences to give a conference for the Section of Natural and Medical Sciences. The D-Day was on February 21st, at the Academy in Brussels. Of course my personal challenge was to present something at the same time interesting and original. The subject was the challenges of the nutritional transition for nutritional research. I think that it is difficult to be very original when you are doing a revision of the state of the art ...

I tried to illustrate the nutritional transition by showing specific country case-studies (Morocco, South Africa, Bolivia, Chile, Iran, Malaysia and Korea), and particularly highlighting the fact that transition never follows a specific trend, hence the approach should be country-specific. The final point had to do with the concept of Nutrigenomics, which speaks about the influence that diet may have on the transmission of genetic signals for disease control. The interesting part of nutrigenomics, is that it is not only at individual level, but it may be a tool for public health nutrition in the coming years.

I concluded with the following ideas or questions:
- No longer exclusive focus of research & interventions on undernutrition
- Overweight and obesity are of concern all over the world
- Diet related chronic diseases (e.g. Med Diet & logevity)
- Interactions between nutrients and genetic expression of disease
- Holistic approach as a must, including genetics, foetal programming (Barker)
- Transition occurs at high speed in developing countries, with chronic disease rising. Are there any other mechanisms involved? Which?
- Are northern recommendations valid for developing countries?

The picture shows a moment of the discussion after the presentation, which was very rich, and the insights of the scientists present was of great value.

Armando

35 years old

Yesterday February 23rd was my birthday ... now I can accurately say that I am in my "mid thirties" (no longer the early thirties, not yet the late thirties). Anyway, thanks for all your kind phone calls, smsjes and mails! The picture shows my self made chocolate cake, covered by lots of unhealthy but delicious cream. The day was not particularly stressing, but by the end some things made it very special.

I went to work as usual, and half hour before leaving, I got an email with the final PDF of an article that will appear on the next issue (Number 3, March 2006) of the British Journal of Nutrition. Well, this article is one of the key contents of my thesis, the subject I have been working already for some years, and finally got published. It took so long time, and it was a blessing to get it as "birthday present". Of course this good news gave me an energy boast. After coming back home, I went to fitness (I should put my own recommendations in practice!) and afterwards my good friend Dirk Surmont, a member of the Church Council, invited me for dinner. It was in whole a nice birthday,

Thank You Jesus for the life You give!

Armando

Visita de Omar

Hola a todos:

Esta semana que pasó fue llena de actividad, y recién puedo escribir algo. Resulta que mi buen amigo Omar Herrera llegó de visita a Gent, luego de haber estado paseando con un grupo de turistas por el medio oriente. Su visita fue simplemente refrescante.

Evidentemente, su agenda en Bélgica estuvo super cargada. El Sábado por la mañana estuvo a cargo del mensaje en nuestro desayuno de varones de la iglesia, y nos recordó que debemos soñar, como buenos hijos de Dios, porque Dios es un Dios de grandes sueños. Nos comentó algunas de sus peripecias en la ventana 10/40, y francamente fue una reunión bien simpática. Por la noche, estuvo compartiendo la palabra en el grupo de adolescentes de una iglesia pentecostal en Mortsel, cerca de Amberes. El domingo cayó una nevada fortísima, luego de que Omar orara para ver nieve ... como respuesta a su oración ... y bueno, casi no llegamos al servicio de la iglesia! En la foto que les pongo, está Omar predicando en Goed Nieuws Christengemeenschaap. Tuvo como traductor a Jeroen Cocquit, quien tiene un don especial para ello. Omar nos habló sobre su testimonio y su andar en la fe de Cristo. Nos animó a tomar riesgos y soñar. A todos los hermanos les gustó mucho, y todos salieron realmente animados en la fe.

Tengo que decir que ha sido un gusto recibir la visita de Omar y espero que se repita pronto.

Armando

Report on conference by Dr. K. Gedrich

On Tuesday January 31st, I attended a conference given by Dr. Kurt Gedrich, visiting lecturer from the Technische Universität München organized by the Department of Public Health of the University of Gent, under the frame of the European HELENA research project. The title of the conference was “Determination of food-based dietary guidelines and individual dietary advice by means of mathematical optimization”

The lecture described the experience of applying advanced linear programming methods to evaluate the dietary behaviour of Germans. The methodological approach was clear, and provided lots of insights for using it in nutritional epidemiology. Dr. Gedrich evaluated how the actual food intake of Germans (differentiated by gender) complies or not with the national nutritional recommendations. I was surprised to learn that apparently women comply less than men with the recommendations. I always thought that women overall ate better than males. That is not the case in Germany.

Another important issue that came out is that consumption of foods of plant origin, particularly vegetables, needs to improve in Germany, and I would say, this can be generalised to most places of the world. Yet the dietary behaviour of Germans is much healthier than the US population (that was the comparison used). The main public health recommendation of the study is to provide dietary guidelines separately for men and women, as at aggregated level the population appears to be closer to the recommendations than it is in reality.

The discussion after the presentation was also very challenging, and the main point raised is that still the nutritional recommendations need to be better supported by data, and how difficult is for the MD’s to translate them into understandable language to the population.

I enjoyed the approach, the whole study, the atmosphere, and definelty the sandwiches that were kindly offered by the organisers. Of course, I would like to apply this kind of methods in the future, but it won’t be soon! This kind of scientific interchange should happen more often.