Why Nutrients?

The field of nutrition continues to attract increasing interest from health professionals, including dietitians, sports nutritionists and medical practitioners, from biomedical, agricultural, nutritional and food scientists and from health conscious consumers alike. A major driver of this increased interest is the growing global concern about health sustainability and recognition of the economic importance of developing more cost-effective strategies for health development and management which will enable us to maintain quality of life and productivity in an aging population and reduce our increasing dependence on costly medical and surgical interventions. Of the potential diet and lifestyle approaches, the concept of functional foods has generated much interest in recent years. The promise to consumers of greater opportunity for self management of their health and to food manufacturers of heightened consumer demand for healthy products has been a major impetus for innovation, marketing and regulatory change in the food industry. A key factor in the rapid development of functional foods has been the role of nutritional science in the identification and utilisation of bioactive nutrients. Indeed, regulatory developments such as health claims on food labels are heavily dependent on rigorous nutritional science for substantiation of claimed benefits. There has been a proliferation of new journals and information services relating to functional foods, nutraceuticals, etc. yet few with a direct focus on nutrients per se. Yet fundamental to designing, evaluating and/or promoting healthy foods is an understanding of the physiological effects of constituent nutrients, together with knowledge of their safety and efficacy, physicochemical properties, organoleptic attributes, sources, availability and sustainability, to name a few relevant fields. These and many more fields of multidisciplinary interest are encompassed in the scope of Nutrients. Clearly the introduction of a journal bearing the name Nutrients is intended to address this topic directly and in the broadest sense. Researchers in the field of nutrition already have a wide range of journals in which to publish their findings. Many reputable, long-established journals originated through professional nutrition and dietetics organisations. Others have expanded from related disciplines to embrace nutrition. Whilst these journals vary considerably in quality and popularity, the overall impact of nutrition-related journals is relatively low compared with other fields of biomedical science. There are many possible reasons for this. One obvious one must be a relatively low readership. Yet, at the same time, there is increasing interest from professionals, industry and lay people alike in the latest developments in …