"Probiotic foods, such as yogurts with lactobacillus, are recommended for everyone, even for very young children". This has been highlighted at the University of Navarra by the expert in Immunonutrition Ascensión Marcos, when receiving the XII award Food and Health awarded by the School of Pharmacy and Nutrition on the occasion of World Food Day.

According to the expert, director of the group of Immunonutrition of the department of Metabolism and Nutrition of the high school of Food Science and Technology and Nutrition (ICTAN) of the CSIC, "there is no scientific evidence that shows that its intake is counterproductive. On the contrary, depending on the bacterial strain we are talking about, it can have beneficial effects on the digestive system itself or improve susceptibility to certain types of dermatitis, for example".

The researcher, president of the International Society for Immunonutrition (ISIN), has participated in a roundtable where she explained that Immunonutrition focuses on the interaction between nutrition and the immune system: "There is a relationship between what we eat and the susceptibility we may have to suffer certain infections, allergies, inflammatory processes, etc.".

This relationship, adds the CSIC expert, "has been empirically demonstrated in animal models, by administering certain vitamins, polyphenols, minerals, fatty acids, antioxidants, which improved their immune system. The difficulty now lies in developing human models, since our immune system is modulated by many other factors, such as physical activity, stress, hours of sleep, adipose tissue or microbiota".

Sugar yes or sugar no?

Regarding sugar intake, so much reviled in recent times, the CSIC researcher recalls that this compound "is essential for the proper functioning of the body. A child's brain needs sugar to function. Another issue is that sugar can come from different sources. Some of them should be taken very occasionally, but not on a daily basis.

In fact, the current director of FESNAD(Spanish Federation of Nutrition, Food and Dietetics Societies) considers that many of the problems related to food have to do with our inability to find a balance: "It is not a question of demonizing the companies that manufacture one or another food, but rather of extending a culture of nutritional Education that is not limited to schools or school canteens, but that reaches teachers and parents. In these years of research if anything we have found that obese parents are almost a guarantee of obese children, and in very few of these cases the Genetics has a decisive weight".

Education Together with Ascensión Marcos, Dr. Pilar Amiano and Dr. Tara Rendo, experts in nutrition and cancer and in nutrition for adolescents, respectively, participated in the roundtable on nutrition.