Introducing i-NutriLife

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), with support from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Innovate UK and the Medical Research Council (MRC), have launched six innovation hubs as part of a new Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club (OIRC), representing an investment of almost £15 million.  The OIRC will help address critical shared barriers to innovation across the food and drink sector.

Poor diet has a huge impact on public health, as recently highlighted in the government food strategy.  The OIRC hubs will bring together world-class leaders from academia, industry and wider stakeholders to address the challenge of producing and encouraging the uptake of healthier, more nutritious food products in the UK.

As part of this initiative, the University of Southampton will lead the i-NutriLife Hub, focussing on how food and beverages can deliver improved nutrition across the entire lifecourse including in older age.

Our Mission

The overarching aim of i-NutriLife is to enable high quality and novel collaborative research involving academia and industry to understand how food and beverages can deliver improved nutrition across the entire lifecourse including in older age. This will provide a mechanism to rapidly translate cutting-edge research findings into more healthful foods and beverages that can change biological and physiological processes to meet consumer need. By linking with research conducted in other Hubs, we will incorporate complementary knowledge on food choice and behaviour, biofortification and functional foods into the process to promote health across the lifecourse through improved nutrition.

i-NutriLife will bring together academic and industry partners to identify specific challenges in the area of lifecourse nutrition as it links with healthy development and healthy ageing. The Hub will be inclusive and open to membership for academic and industry partners. The Hub will act to catalyse research to better understand the impact of whole diets, foods, nutrients and non-nutrient diet components (e.g. novel fibre sources, phytochemicals, probiotics) on biological and physiological processes across the lifecourse. Working closely with industry partners, the Hub will support the development of new researchers and strategies to translate this new knowledge to

• improve growth, development, health and well-being in early life that is carried forward through the lifecourse to promote healthy ageing
• improve the diet of the population to prevent or slow age-related functional decline and loss of resilience and so to promote healthy ageing.