Vitamins: Preparing for the Next 100 Years

The insights gained from the last 100 years of vitamin research and applications have contributed substantially to our fundamental understanding of biology and importantly to the promotion of human health. There is no reason to think that the next 100 years will be any less fruitful if we are committed to preparing for them, particularly by changing four critical nutrition paradigms. First, we must move beyond the concept of preventing vitamin deficiencies and inadequacies to establishing health and, further, to creating optimal physiological functions. Each essential vitamin possesses different concentration thresholds for its variety of effects and the required balance necessary to achieving each has yet to be fully defined. Second, we must apply the research approaches and methods of “-omics,” systems biology, and imaging technologies to define the dynamic role of vitamins and their broad array of genomic, molecular, biochemical, and functional interactions. Such work is necessary to understand the multiplicity of vitamin actions and ultimately apply them directly at the level of the individual. Third, we must revise the concept of evidence-based nutrition away from its current hierarchical system to recognize in a comprehensive and integrated way the attributes of each type of approach to research. To adhere to a single gold standard of the randomized clinical trial ignores both how we have moved forward so productively during the last 100 years and the vital information to be gained from basic research and other human studies; further, it acts to stifle innovation in both scientific and regulatory affairs. Fourth, we must understand that changes in the supply and distribution of food during the next century are likely to be at least as dramatic as those which have occurred over this last one. For example, inevitable environmental constraints will require more food protein be derived from plant than animal sources, a shift that will directly impact the dietary sources for vitamins. To meet the challenge of achieving global health in 2113 among a population of 9 billion people, effectively managing these four changes demands new and creative ways in which those in academia, government and non-government organizations, and industry must work together.