作为美国营养学会的第一次独立科学会议，营养2018rewarded attendees with mind blowing research findings from all over the world and offered a dynamic platform for researchers to communicate and network. Research on nutrition science has evolved to a stage where not only what people eat is of interest, but the accessibility of food, as well as the impact of eating behaviors, gut microbiota and physical activity are all integral to addressing key issues such as obesity and delivering healthy lifestyles.

Vegetarian diet has a variety of health benefits

根据13年基于荷兰的研究，包括近6,000名受试者，食用比动物蛋白更多的植物蛋白的人患冠心病的风险较低。巴西的另一项研究得出的结论是，在4,500名参与者中，食用植物蛋白比动物蛋白更多的植物蛋白的人在动脉内部有斑块的可能性降低了60％，这是动脉粥样硬化的独立危险因素。

The quality of plant-based diets is also important.一个分析of over 125,000 adults found that body weight changes over a 4-year-period were associated with the quality of plant-based diets. Diets rich in high quality plant foods including whole grains, fresh fruit, vegetables and nuts, were associated with significantly lower weight gains compared to diets rich in refined carbohydrates and fried food.

Another学习在近30,000名美国成年人中，与不食用这种食物的食物相比，高质量的植物性食品的消费与死亡率降低30％有关，而在患有慢性疾病的人中，这种好处尤其深远。

In an oral presentation Professor Frank Hu from Harvard University also discussed the benefits a plant-based diet compared to diets containing meat. He described how plant-based diets are associated with higher diet quality, lower risk of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart diseases, and lower long-term weight gain.

“Prof Hu emphasized the need to look at more than just calories and that to move forward in addressing the key issues in nutrition we need to assess dietary quality”

胡教授强调需要考虑到卡路里不仅仅是在解决营养的关键问题方面的前进，我们需要评估饮食质量，考虑到食物的准备方式以及在大量营养素之上添加了哪些成分。

工作场所的食物有助于肥胖

大规模学习中心的Stephen Onufrak博士提出的Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered that the food people consume in their places of work, whether it was purchased from vending machines or free food provided by the company , were usually high in salt, added sugars or solid fats. These unhealthy foods that people had easy or free access to at work, could result in an extra intake of up to 1,300 calories per week, according to the survey of 5,222 employees in US.

研究发现，四分之一的参与者每周至少从工作中获得食物。这1,300次额外的卡路里将至少需要两个小时的有氧运动，例如慢跑或游泳才能燃烧。但这也意味着雇主可以通过轻松地使用工作中的健康食品选择来做些事情来改善员工的食物环境。

使您的新陈代谢灵活

代谢柔韧性是指我们身体在不同能源之间转移的能力，尤其是在燃烧脂肪和使用葡萄糖之间。在健康的受试者中，新陈代谢应该是灵活的，因此，在保持低到中等水平的体育活动水平并切换为碳水化合物中时，人体将使用脂肪酸（来自脂肪的摄入量）作为其主要能源。当体育活动的强度增加时，来源。

Dr Eric Ravussin shared with us that, metabolic flexibility is affected by diet, sedentary behaviors and physical activity. Unhealthy diets and lifestyles including lots of refined carbohydrate, added sugar and sedentary behaviors are associated with metabolic inflexibility, meaning the body has difficulty in switching to using fat as an energy source. In the long term this can lead to a lot of serious health issues, as it means the body is constantly in need of carbohydrate, as it cannot use stored fat as an energy source.

频繁食用碳水化合物会导致胰岛素水平的峰值，这会使人体对胰岛素不敏感，因此对这种信号激素的反应较低，最终会导致2型糖尿病。因此，代谢灵活性是旨在改善人们代谢健康的疗法的重要潜在靶标。

Gut microbiota: an unsolved puzzle

肠道菌群已被确定为调节新陈代谢的重要因素，并有可能影响我们的健康。肠内的微生物组尤其如此。

According to the presentation by Dr Daniel McDonald, on behalf of theAmerican Gut Project，，，，diet can significantly affect the chemistry inside the gut. Researchers have been using a crowdsourcing approach to collect samples in a large scale study. They compared human gut microbiome samples from different countries and to environmental samples such as water or food.

To date they have found that the diversity of plants in the diet is heavily associated with molecular features of the microbes inside the gut, and that stress (like surgery) can have significant impact on human gut microbiota. With their ongoing research, they are hoping to unveil more details about the gut environment and what the microbes within it produce, and to answer questions relating to how the gut environment interacts with food intake and stress.