On Friday, September 13, 18 students celebrated the graduation ceremony of the XIV promotion of the Master's Degree European University in Food, Nutrition and Metabolism (EMENU) with which the program culminates. After the welcome by the director of Master's Degree, Dr. J. Alfredo Martínez, the closing lecture entitled "Influence of early nutrition on health", was held at position by Dr. Idoia Labayen, from area of Physiotherapy of the Public University of Navarra.

During his speech, Labayen addressed the influence of early nutrition on health and highlighted the increase in non-communicable diseases (cardiovascular disease, obesity, fatty liver disease and diabetes mellitus subject II) as a cause of mortality when there is a conflict between educational biology and Western lifestyles: "Only the modification of lifestyles in childhood produces, for example, an 80% reduction of suffering from fatty liver disease in adulthood".

He also explained that sugary drinks increase the accumulation of fat in the liver in children between 8 and 11 years of age, so that the higher the consumption of these drinks, the higher the genetic risk of obesity. In addition, he referred to metabolic programming ("You are what you ate") as an adaptive process whereby nutrition and other environmental factors alter the pathways of development during the prenatal growth period, thereby inducing changes in postnatal metabolism and adult susceptibility to chronic disease. In this sense he presented several programs of study that relate birth weight and the prevalence of arterial hypertension (AHT), body fat distribution and insulin resistance in adulthood; the lower the birth weight, the higher the prevalence of AHT, the greater the accumulation of abdominal fat and the greater the insulin resistance and, as a consequence, the higher the prevalence of diabetes mellitus subject II.

For her part, Dr. Adela López de Cerain, dean of the School Pharmacy and Nutrition, congratulated the graduates, while reminding them of the University's commitment to all of them throughout their professional lives, already as alumni.