Human Nutrition Research Grants

Sustainable improvement in human nutrition is one of the major issues in the portfolio of the Foundation. During more than 40 years basic and applied research in nutrition has been supported by the Foundation in more than 50 developing countries. In view of the past activities of the Foundation as well as the world’s situation at the turn of the millennium, it was recognized that the public health relevance of the supported research as well as aspects of sustainability, capacity building and educational issues should have a higher priority.

Thus, priority is given to projects which lead to sustainable developments with strong elements of capacity building, and the implementation of the results of a research project should be immediate and sustainable. Highly sophisticated nutrition research of mainly academic interest without public health relevance has lower priority for support as well as solely laboratory based studies or animal experimentation.

Research Topics

At present the Foundation’s work is primarily concerned with human nutrition research issues dealing with:

1. maternal and child nutrition, including breastfeeding and complementary feeding,
2. macro- and micronutrient deficiencies and imbalances,
3. interactions between infection and nutrition, and
4. nutrition education and health promotion