Nutrition Research Methodology 323dietary means, and gene–nutrient and gene–
environment interactions. Moreover, pooling of data
from several cohort studies may provide a very pow-
erful tool to assess the benefi ts of a healthy diet. An
increasing interest in a dietary pattern approach
instead of a single nutrient approach will be seen in
nutritional epidemiology in the forthcoming decades.
In addition, large primary prevention trials using the
approach of assessing the effect of an overall dietary
pattern (Estruch et al., 2006; Howard et al., 2006) are
growing nowadays and their results will be on the rise
during the next decade (Martinez-Gonzalez, 2004).
Nutritional epidemiology will also adopt a wider,
multidisciplinary approach, with more studies con-
cerning the impact of factors affecting social determi-
nants of eating patterns, food supplies, and nutrient
utilization on health to facilitate the decisions of
policy-makers, food industry managers, investigators,
and consumers.
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