American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 69, No. 6, 1303S,
June 1999
© 1999 American Society for Clinical Nutrition
Preface
Tim Byers
A 2-d workshop entitled "The Role of Epidemiology in Determining When Evidence Is Sufficient to Support Nutrition Recommendations" was held in Washington, DC, on October 7–8, 1997. The workshop was sponsored by the North American branch of the International Life Sciences Institute, a scientific organization supported by a wide variety of food industries and dedicated to the improvement of methods and communication in nutritional sciences.
The purpose of the workshop was to examine critically the role of epidemiology in the formulation of dietary advice for the public. The workshop served as a forum for discussion among nutritional epidemiologists, other nutritional scientists, and food-policy experts representing food industries, academia, and government.
Discussions were facilitated by the development of working drafts of background papers and case studies that were circulated to workshop participants before the meeting. Written comments and questions were given to the authors, who then were able to focus their presentations on issues of controversy or disagreement. After the workshop, the authors revised their papers and a summary statement of the key issues was prepared with input from the workshop participants. The papers were then peer-reviewed, and are now being published in this issue of
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
.
We hope that readers will find this supplement to be a useful summary of issues related to the development of nutrition recommendations using information from the rapidly growing field of nutritional epidemiology.
