Nutrition, Lifestyle and Metabolism

You can find out more about our team here.

Healthy muscles, bones and metabolism play a vital role in helping people stay active, independent and resilient throughout life.

By combining world-leading expertise in nutrition, body composition, musculoskeletal and cardiometabolic health, obesity, and healthy ageing, we are developing new ways to prevent disease, preserve physical function and support independent living.

Our research explores how interventions at key stages of life, from before conception and early childhood through to adulthood and older age, can improve musculoskeletal and cardiometabolic health and reduce the risk of future illness.

What we are tackling – research questions

Improving nutrition, lifestyle and metabolism in pregnancy and childhood

Led by Professors Janis Baird & Mark Johnson

How can we promote healthy development by improving nutrition, lifestyle and metabolism before and after birth, and during childhood?

Improving nutrition, lifestyle and metabolism in adulthood

Led by Professors Christopher Byrne & Philip Calder

How can we sustain and promote resilience by improving nutrition, lifestyle and metabolism in adulthood?

Our impact

We have transformed understanding of early life influences on non-transmissible diseases like diabetes and targeted them to improve health in later life. Our research has driven better care, new guidelines, training and advocacy for Metabolic (dysfunction) Associated Fatty Liver Disease (MAFLD). We have also led new approaches to preventing weakening of bones (osteoporosis) and muscles (sarcopenia), changing UK and global health policy.

Our online learning tools are used by healthcare professionals in over 17 countries to drive healthier early life nutrition.
We are equipping the next generation of parents to understand the health impacts of their choices for them and their future children. Our LifeLab teaching laboratory and online resources have engaged over 11,500 students from 66 schools.
Our research directly informed the 2017 World Health Organisation Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity and 2018 Nurturing Care Framework.
We have developed new breath-test diagnostics of liver function that measure a type of carbon (13C). Studies detected reduced handling of nutrients in MAFLD with results providing the basis for developing rapid, non-invasive diagnostics, published in 2021.
We supported the development of a second-generation global standard for fracture risk assessment (FRAX). We have also championed the clinical- and cost-effectiveness of Fracture Liaison Services (FLS). This global standard of care has led to over 400 registered FLS across 46 countries.
We were first to show a link between pregnant mothers’ vitamin D status and their babies’ bone mass. Our results informed recommendations that are now reflected in Public Health England maternal vitamin D guidance. Read more