Alfredo Martínez, professor and Full Professor of Nutrition at the University of Navarra, has been appointed president of IUNS(International Union of Nutritional Sciences), the third most important organization in the field of Nutrition after WHO and FAO, made up of a hundred countries.

The expert, a native of Soria, is the first Spaniard to preside over this Union dedicated to Nutrition Sciences, where he replaces Anna Lartey, the current Director of Nutrition at FAO worldwide, at position .

Headquartered in London, the IUNS - created in 1946 - has two fundamental objectives: promote the advancement of Nutrition Science, the research and the development, and scientific cooperation in the derived strategies that can be applied.

Among the challenges that the institution will continue to address in the next 4 years, under the presidency of Professor Martínez, two strategic areas stand out: the fight against obesity at a global level and the determination of the parameters of child development : "In the world there are currently some 1.5 billion obese or overweight people and 800 million people at risk of malnutrition. Both are the extreme faces of a very serious global problem, which is malnutrition, directly related to other chronic diseases such as diabetes, arteriosclerosis, cardiovascular diseases or hypertension," warns the new IUNS president. "In fact," he continues, "in recent years obesity has overtaken malnutrition as a public health problem, even in developing countries development, multiplying the incidence of this true pandemic".

Other priority areas of action for IUNS are nutrition related to climate change (FAO dedicated its World Food Day to this issue, which is particularly affecting the poorest countries), the training of nutrition specialists at the global level or the interactions between Genetics and nutrition.

Personalized nutrition through a test

The field of Personalized Nutrition is precisely the area where Professor Alfredo Martínez works together with his team of the research center in Nutrition of the University of Navarra, at partnership with the Center at network of Physiopathology of Obesity (CIBERobn). "Precision Nutrition is the confluence between all those aspects core topic of our diet and how nutrition impacts our health. What we are aiming for is to be able to have relatively simple tests to offer nutritional recommendations that take into account both Genetics and cultural preferences, family medical history and staff, microbiota, possible intolerances and allergies, lifestyle, etc. Always with the goal to prevent and treat obesity and associated diseases more successfully", emphasizes the Full Professor and new president of IUNS.

Throughout his career, Alfredo Martínez has participated in many Nutrition programs of study -such as DIOGENES, NUGENOB, FOOD4ME, PREDIMED and PREVIEW-, the results of which have been published in important journals of the specialization program. He has also published or collaborated in more than 800 scientific articles in the areas of Obesity and Nutrition and Omic Sciences. Finally, he has received several awards throughout his career degree program, such as the Hippocrates and Dupont awards; and collaborated as Visiting Professor at the universities of Nothingham, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Oxford and King College London.