Member Event: Healthier Food, Healthier Minds

• The brain introduced: Prof. Anne Marie Minihane
• Gut Feeling: Targeting the gut for brain health: Dr David Vauzour
• We are what we eat: Nutrition and brain vitality into older age: Prof Anne Marie Minihane
• Can I make a health or nutrition claim: Prof Susan Fairweather-Tait
• Developing a healthy diet and lifestyle through adolescence and early adulthood: Dr Eleanor Winpenny
• The Brand Lens: Helping People to See Better Eating Choices Differently: Andrew Piper

Get to know NIHA NIHA develops and implements effective strategies to promote sustained population behaviour change to improve physical and mental well-being. A core interest in NIHA is establishing the impact of nutrition, physical activity, sleep and smoking status on health outcomes, and how to deliver effective behaviour change interventions Behaviour change (including healthy eating, physical activity, non-smoking, moderate alcohol consumption, medication adherence, sleep and socialisation), promotes human flourishing and health and reduces the risk of premature disease by up to 70% Our research contributes to the UK Healthy Ageing Grand Challenge to increase healthy life expectancy by 5 years by 2035, while narrowing the gap between the experience of the richest and poorest NIHAs research falls primarily under three core Research Themes

• Theme 1: Behaviour Inequalities and Health
• Theme 2: Plant Foods and Health
• Theme 3: Cardiometabolic Health and Brain Ageing

These three Themes are focused on health and disease prevention, with a particular emphasis on brain, cardiometabolic, gut, and musculoskeletal health. A summary of each Research Theme is described below with more details on NIHA’s website. Get to know the speakers Anne Marie Minihane, Professor of Nutrigenetics Head of the Department of Nutrition and Preventive Medicine Department, Norwich Medical School, UEA and Director of Norwich Institute of Healthy Ageing (NIHA) Anne-Marie and team’s research programme investigates the impact of dietary components (marine omega-3- fatty acids and a Mediterranean-style dietary pattern) and APOE genotype on cognitive and overall brain health. Norwich Institute of Healthy Ageing (NIHA) is focused on providing agency, and the capability, opportunity and motivation to adopt healthier behaviours (eating, physical activity, socialisation, sleep etc.) aligned with recommendations, and also the translation of knowledge into food product innovation In addition, at UEA, Anne Marie contributes to teaching Medical and Bioscience students, in the area of nutrition and disease prevention and therapeutics. She is an associate or deputy editor for several nutrition journals. When away from science she enjoys the outdoors, and in particular running, good food and wandering around supermarkets, social and historical fiction, and travel and its planning. Dr David Vauzour, Associate Professor in Molecular Nutrition Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, UK. Dr Vauzour has a longstanding interest in the impact of food bioactive on (neuro)degenerative disorders and to develop novel strategies to delay brain ageing and cognitive decline. His recent interests concern how food bio-actives modulate the gut microbiome-brain axis in ageing and neurodegenerative disorders and their underlying molecular mechanisms. To date, Dr Vauzour has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and currently serves as the Associate Editor for the journals “Nutrition and Healthy Aging”, Frontiers in Neuroscience – Gut-Brain axis and Frontiers in Nutrition – Nutrition and Brain Health. In addition, he is a member of the editorial board of “Nature Scientific Reports (Neuroscience)”, PharmaNutrition and “Peer J (Pharmacology)” and currently sits on the ILSI Europe Scientific Advisory Committee. Professor Susan Fairweather-Tait Professor Susan Fairweather-Tait is a Professor of Human Nutrition, at Norwich Medical School, the University of East Anglia (UEA). Her main research interests are mineral metabolism and requirements, in particular iron, and she has over 300 peer-reviewed publications. She has served on several national and international advisory committees, including the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Panel on Nutrition. She is currently chair of the UK Nutrition and Health Claims Committee (2020-present) and the FAO/WHO expert group on nutrient requirements for children aged 0-36 months (2020-present). She is a member of the UK Scientific Advisory Committee for Nutrition (SACN) (2021-present), the Food Standards Agency Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (2020-present), EFSA’s Working Group on Upper Levels of Nutrients, and she represents SACN on the Board of the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey. She was elected a Fellow of the American Society for Nutrition in 2017 and appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Nutrition Society in 2021. Dr Eleanor Winpenny Senior Research Associate and MRC Career Development Award Fellow at the University of Cambridge Dr Eleanor Winpenny conducts research to investigate diet and eating behaviours trajectories across adolescence and early adulthood. She is interested in the influence of changing determinants on a diet, as young people go through early adulthood life transitions, including leaving the parental home, finishing education, starting employment and starting a family. She aims to understand how the exposures that people experience during this developmental period contribute to inequalities in health behaviours and outcomes. Eleanor is the Principal Investigator of the ‘Diet and Eating Behaviours Across Early Adulthood Transitions’ study, which is collecting new data on adolescents as they transition out of secondary school. Andrew Piper Working in the UK and internationally during a career of more than 30 years, Andrew has designed visual identity and communication for many of the world’s leading brands. At leading agencies Landor, Clear M&C Saatchi and his own consultancy Rare, he has led the creative development and implementation of effective and enduring solutions for Kellogg Company, Campari Group, Astra Zeneca and Unilever. For membership organisations including Arrival Diversity & Inclusion and CIOB, his clarity of thinking and creative direction is enabling them to grow influence and impact with audiences and stakeholder groups. “The role of a compelling communication solution to frame the core message, create aspiration and build trust cannot be under-estimated in the competition to influence better choices.” View the agenda here