Early Life Nutrition and Future Health

Inequity starts before birth and is programmed in part by nutritional exposures. If these exposures occur around the time of conception during pregnancy and/or in infancy or childhood (all critical periods of development) they may alter a childs health trajectory and impact risk for impaired cognition and learning and cardiometabolic immune and neuropsychiatric diseases and disorders. This Special Issue on Early Life Nutrition and Future Health has the following aims: 1) understand the origins of offspring health inequities from an early nutritional perspective; 2) uncover new insights into the environmental biological and social mechanisms that underpin these health outcomes in offspring; and 3) present novel targets and approaches to optimise health trajectories and prevent chronic diseases and disorders in later life and across generations. The research projects included herein highlight novel mechanistic epidemiologic and intervention studies that target key windows where nutrition has the greatest influence on future health (preconception prenatal and postnatal periods) and that explore vulnerable populations and animal models of early life nutritional programming.