What’s Essential for the Prenatal Brain?

October 25, 2017 – An interview with Steven H. Zeisel, MD, PhD, Kenan Distinguished University Professor of Nutrition and Pediatrics, and Director, UNC Nutrition Research Institute, Kannapolis, NC.
SZ: “In science, 10 percent of successful scientific discovery is the result of skill and hard work – but 90 percent comes from asking the right question. During my graduate training, I was very lucky to ask the right question. I wondered where the choline in acetylcholine comes from. Acetylcholine is an organic chemical that serves as a neurotransmitter – it’s released by nerve cells and sends signals to other cells, such as in muscles. At the time, all the textbooks stated that people could make their own supply of this nutrient in the liver and did not need to obtain it through food. I knew that this was not true for rats, mice and dogs, and I doubted it was true for people. Read more.


How To Navigate Holiday Cooking

Appetite For Life – Tuesday, November 14th, with Susan Smith, PhD, NRI Deputy Director, “How to Navigate Holiday Cooking”

We try our best to select healthy eating choices. But our good intentions will go out the window these next several weeks as we are confronted with a whirlwind of holiday events, foods, and drinks. Adding to this stress are the emotional connections we have with favorite holiday foods and the expectations of our family and friends. Dr. Smith will share tips and suggestions to help you navigate a precision nutrition course through those holiday temptations yet still enjoy the holiday season…all while you “eat like a nutritionist!

Program begins at 6:00 PM at Restaurant Forty-Six101 West Avenue, Kannapolis, NC 28081. Guests should arrive a few minutes early. Doors open at 5:30 PM. Program seating is limited. Registration opens October 18. Register here.

AFL 2018 PROGRAM SCHEDULE  Please note the change to WEDNESDAY evening.

  • January 17 – Carol Cheatham, PhD
  • February 14 – Jef French, PhD

Registration for each program opens 4 weeks in advance on uncnri.org.

Nutrition Training for Young Doctors Lacks Bite

Most US medical schools do not require medical students to learn basic nutrition theory, even though poor diet is the leading preventable risk factor for disability or early death in the United States.[1,2“It takes at least 25-30 hours of medical school instruction to achieve just basic nutrition competencies,” according to an expert committee of the Nutrition Academic Award Program of the National Institutes of Health,[3] Martin Kohlmeier, MD, professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill and researcher at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute, told Medscape. Read more.


AFL @ Johnson & Wales University Recipes

Enjoy cooking the delicious recipes shared by Chef Megan Lambert, MS, RD, Senior Instructor, College of Culinary Arts, Johnson & Wales University, Charlotte. Click here.

Recipe Nutrition from Appetite For Life

The science on food and nutrients and their relationship to disease is complex, especially related to cancer. Cancer in and of itself is a complex disease that is not fully understood. As consumers, we often find ourselves inundated with the latest nutrition “story of the day” and often that story conflicts with a headline we may have seen only a week before. This simply makes trying to differentiate science and nutrition guidance more confusing. Scientists at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute (NRI) are working very hard to understand the intricacies of diet, nutrients, and their relationship to cancer prevention and progression. Read more.