The Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) Food Forum was established in 1993 to allow science and technology leaders in the food industry, top administrators in several federal government agencies from the United States and Canada, representatives from consumer interest groups, and academicians to openly communicate in a neutral setting. The Food Forum provides a mechanism for these diverse groups to discuss food, food safety, and food technology issues and to identify possible approaches for addressing these issues by taking into consideration the often complex interactions among industry, regulatory agencies, consumers, and academia. The objective, however, is to illuminate issues, not to resolve them. Unlike study committees of the IOM, forums cannot provide advice or recommendations to any government agency or other organization. Similarly, workshop summaries or other products resulting from forum activities are precluded from reaching conclusions or recommendations but, instead, are intended to reflect the variety of opinions expressed by the participants. On July 13-14, 1999, the forum convened a workshop on Food Safety Policy, Science, and Risk Assessment: Strengthening the Connection. The purpose of the workshop was to address many of the issues that complicate the development of microbiological food safety policy, focusing on the use of science and risk assessment in establishing policy and in determining the utilization of food safety resources. The purpose was not to find fault with past food safety regulatory activities or food safety policy decisions. Rather, the goal was to determine what actions have been taken in the past to address food safety issues, to consider what influences led to the policies that were put in place, and to explore how improvements can be made in the future.This report is a summary of the workshop presentations. It is limited to the views and opinions of those invited to present at the workshop and reflects their concerns and areas of expertise. As such, the report does not provide a comprehensive review of the research and current status of food safety policy, science, and risk assessment. The organization of the report approximates the order of the presentations at the workshop. The identification of a speaker as an "industry representative" or a "Food and Drug Administration representative" is not intended to suggest that the individual spoke for that organization or others who work there.

The Food Forum of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a virtual workshop, Challenges and Opportunities for Precision and Personalized Nutrition, on August 10-12, 2021. The workshop explored potential challenges and opportunities in the application of precision and personalized nutrition approaches to optimize dietary guidance and improve nutritional status. Workshops presenters discussed current precision and personalized nutrition research methodologies, limitations in data and design, adapting technologies for utilization, and policy and regulatory challenges. This Proceedings of a Workshop summarizes the presentations and discussions of the workshop.

Influence of Pregnancy Weight on Maternal and Child Health: Workshop Report summarizes a one and a half day workshop convened in May 2006 that reviewed U.S. trends in maternal weight (prior to, during, and after pregnancy) among different populations of women; examined the emerging research findings related to the complex relationship of the biological, behavioral, psychological, and social interactions that affect maternal and pregnancy weight on maternal and child health outcomes; and discussed interventions that use this complex relationship to promote appropriate weight during pregnancy and postpartum.

Given the unprecedented environment in the United States in which two-thirds of the adult population meets the criteria for being overweight or obese, the implications for women in the reproductive age period are unique in the history of the country. The concerns for maternal and infant health are real. The questions and answers tackled by committee members and workshop participants were not easy. Nevertheless, having an opportunity to explore what is known, examine the gaps in knowledge, and explore what to do now and in the future build a pathway for further inquiry and action. This report summarizes the workshop proceedings and highlights key themes that deserve further attention.

The participants in this workshop describe what is known about recent trends in maternal weight gain and the impact of maternal weight during pregnancy on the health of mothers and their children. The workshop provided a valuable opportunity to assess trends that have occurred since the publication of an earlier study by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which included guidelines for recommended weight gain during pregnancy.

For more than two decades, the practice of risk assessment has been applied to human public health issues, and policy makers have used the results of risk assessments in their decision-making process. Approaches for risk assessment have been developed for nonnutrients such as drugs, food additives, and pesticides, but approaches for risk assessment have received less attention in the nutrition area. Some aspects of the risk assessment approach used for nonnutrients are applicable to the assessment of risks related to nutrition. The overall approach, however, must be adapted and modified to take into account the unique aspects of nutrients, including the fact that both high and low nutrient intakes are associated with risk. Experience with the application of a risk assessment process to the setting of upper levels of intake for essential nutrients, for example, has uncovered a number of challenges. Adapting and developing risk assessment strategies for application in nutrition science could lead to improved approaches to the development of dietary and nutritional recommendations and thus is a topic of considerable interest.

One nonscientific but overall challenge to nutritional risk assessment relates to increasing and improving communication among experts from key disciplines in ways that could inform the nutritional risk assessment process. Among these key disciplines are nutrition, toxicology, dietary exposure assessment, economics, risk analysis, and epidemiology. How can the perspectives and methods of these diverse fields be brought together to develop more effective approaches for quantitative nutritional risk assessment? How can they be applied to a spectrum of topics related to food and nutrition—micronutrients, macronutrients, dietary supplements, whole foods, food groups, and dietary patterns? How can they help overcome the data challenges that confront nutritional risk assessors?

As a step toward improving the communication and sharing methods and information across disciplines, members of the Interagency Risk Assessment Consortium, the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the Institute of Medicine''s Food Forum, and the International Life Sciences Institute planned the Nutritional Risk Assessment Workshop. The workshop was held on February 28 and March 1, 2007, in Washington, D.C. This workshop, which was envisioned as one in a series, focused on opening a dialogue to explore the unique questions and challenges faced by nutritionists and the potential use of risk assessment methodologies to answer them. Nutritional Risk Assessment : Perspectives, Methods, and Data Challenges, Workshop Summary summarizes the happenings of this workshop.

In what ways can the process for developing Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) be enhanced? The workshop entitled "The Development of DRIs 1994-2004: Lessons Learned and New Challenges" offered a valuable window into the issues and challenges inherent in the development of nutrient reference values. The dialogue—carried out under the auspices of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), Food and Nutrition Board (hereafter referred to jointly as the IOM)—was enriched by the 10 years of experience in deriving the expanded set of values known as the DRIs, plus the decades of experience that grounded the earlier Recommended Dietary Allowances for the United States and the Recommended Nutrient Intakes for Canada. The lessons learned and the knowledge gained will guide decisions about the next phase of the DRIs. To paraphrase one participant, we are now asking better questions.

The Institute of Medicine''s Food and Nutrition Board and the National Research Council''s Policy and Global Affairs Division convened a workshop in Washington, D.C., entitled Foodborne Disease and Public Health: An Iranian-American Workshop. The overall goals of this workshop were to facilitate the exchange of ideas about foodborne disease and public health and to promote further collaboration among Americans and Iranians on this topic of mutual interest. Experts invited to participate in this workshop addressed a variety of topics, ranging from the surveillance of outbreaks of foodborne illness to approaches to medical training in the Iranian and U.S. educational systems. The workshop was part of a series of cooperative efforts between the United States and Iran as the two countries have collaborated in the past on similar projects relating to foodborne disease.

As women of childbearing age have become heavier, the trade-off between maternal and child health created by variation in gestational weight gain has become more difficult to reconcile. Weight Gain During Pregnancy responds to the need for a reexamination of the 1990 Institute of Medicine guidelines for weight gain during pregnancy. It builds on the conceptual framework that underscored the 1990 weight gain guidelines and addresses the need to update them through a comprehensive review of the literature and independent analyses of existing databases. The book explores relationships between weight gain during pregnancy and a variety of factors (e.g., the mother''s weight and height before pregnancy) and places this in the context of the health of the infant and the mother, presenting specific, updated target ranges for weight gain during pregnancy and guidelines for proper measurement. New features of this book include a specific range of recommended gain for obese women.Weight Gain During Pregnancy is intended to assist practitioners who care for women of childbearing age, policy makers, educators, researchers, and the pregnant women themselves to understand the role of gestational weight gain and to provide them with the tools needed to promote optimal pregnancy outcomes.

Legal regulations and manufacturers'' monitoring practices have not been enough to prevent contamination of the national food supply and protect consumers from serious harm. In addressing food safety risks, regulators could perhaps better ensure the quality and safety of food by monitoring food production not just at a single point in production but all along the way, from farm to table.

Recognizing the troubled state of food safety, the Institute of Medicine''s (IOM) Food Forum met in Washington, DC, on September 9, 2008, to explore the management of food safety practices from the beginning of the supply chain to the marketplace.

Since 1941, Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) has been recognized as the most authoritative source of information on nutrient levels for healthy people. Since publication of the 10th edition in 1989, there has been rising awareness of the impact of nutrition on chronic disease. In light of new research findings and a growing public focus on nutrition and health, the expert panel responsible for formulation RDAs reviewed and expanded its approach—the result: Dietary Reference Intakes.

This new series of references greatly extends the scope and application of previous nutrient guidelines. For each nutrient the book presents what is known about how the nutrient functions in the human body, what the best method is to determine its requirements, which factors (caffeine or exercise, for example) may affect how it works, and how the nutrient may be related to chronic disease.

This volume of the series presents information about thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, folate, vitamin B12, pantothenic acid, biotin, and choline.

Based on analysis of nutrient metabolism in humans and data on intakes in the U.S. population, the committee recommends intakes for each age group—from the first days of life through childhood, sexual maturity, midlife, and the later years. Recommendations for pregnancy and lactation also are made, and the book identifies when intake of a nutrient may be too much. Representing a new paradigm for the nutrition community, Dietary Reference Intakes encompasses:

This new framework encompasses both essential nutrients and other food components thought to pay a role in health, such as dietary fiber. It incorporates functional endpoints and examines the relationship between dose and response in determining adequacy and the hazards of excess intake for each nutrient.

The Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) Food Forum was established in 1993 to allow science and technology leaders in the food industry, top administrators in several federal government agencies from the United States and Canada, representatives from consumer interest groups, and academicians to openly communicate in a neutral setting. The Food Forum provides a mechanism for these diverse groups to discuss food, food safety, and food technology issues and to identify possible approaches for addressing these issues by taking into consideration the often complex interactions among industry, regulatory agencies, consumers, and academia. The objective, however, is to illuminate issues, not to resolve them. Unlike study committees of the IOM, forums cannot provide advice or recommendations to any government agency or other organization. Similarly, workshop summaries or other products resulting from forum activities are precluded from reaching conclusions or recommendations but, instead, are intended to reflect the variety of opinions expressed by the participants. On July 13-14, 1999, the forum convened a workshop on Food Safety Policy, Science, and Risk Assessment: Strengthening the Connection. The purpose of the workshop was to address many of the issues that complicate the development of microbiological food safety policy, focusing on the use of science and risk assessment in establishing policy and in determining the utilization of food safety resources. The purpose was not to find fault with past food safety regulatory activities or food safety policy decisions. Rather, the goal was to determine what actions have been taken in the past to address food safety issues, to consider what influences led to the policies that were put in place, and to explore how improvements can be made in the future.This report is a summary of the workshop presentations. It is limited to the views and opinions of those invited to present at the workshop and reflects their concerns and areas of expertise. As such, the report does not provide a comprehensive review of the research and current status of food safety policy, science, and risk assessment. The organization of the report approximates the order of the presentations at the workshop. The identification of a speaker as an "industry representative" or a "Food and Drug Administration representative" is not intended to suggest that the individual spoke for that organization or others who work there.

The Food Forum of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a virtual workshop, Challenges and Opportunities for Precision and Personalized Nutrition, on August 10-12, 2021. The workshop explored potential challenges and opportunities in the application of precision and personalized nutrition approaches to optimize dietary guidance and improve nutritional status. Workshops presenters discussed current precision and personalized nutrition research methodologies, limitations in data and design, adapting technologies for utilization, and policy and regulatory challenges. This Proceedings of a Workshop summarizes the presentations and discussions of the workshop.

Influence of Pregnancy Weight on Maternal and Child Health: Workshop Report summarizes a one and a half day workshop convened in May 2006 that reviewed U.S. trends in maternal weight (prior to, during, and after pregnancy) among different populations of women; examined the emerging research findings related to the complex relationship of the biological, behavioral, psychological, and social interactions that affect maternal and pregnancy weight on maternal and child health outcomes; and discussed interventions that use this complex relationship to promote appropriate weight during pregnancy and postpartum.

Given the unprecedented environment in the United States in which two-thirds of the adult population meets the criteria for being overweight or obese, the implications for women in the reproductive age period are unique in the history of the country. The concerns for maternal and infant health are real. The questions and answers tackled by committee members and workshop participants were not easy. Nevertheless, having an opportunity to explore what is known, examine the gaps in knowledge, and explore what to do now and in the future build a pathway for further inquiry and action. This report summarizes the workshop proceedings and highlights key themes that deserve further attention.

The participants in this workshop describe what is known about recent trends in maternal weight gain and the impact of maternal weight during pregnancy on the health of mothers and their children. The workshop provided a valuable opportunity to assess trends that have occurred since the publication of an earlier study by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which included guidelines for recommended weight gain during pregnancy.

For more than two decades, the practice of risk assessment has been applied to human public health issues, and policy makers have used the results of risk assessments in their decision-making process. Approaches for risk assessment have been developed for nonnutrients such as drugs, food additives, and pesticides, but approaches for risk assessment have received less attention in the nutrition area. Some aspects of the risk assessment approach used for nonnutrients are applicable to the assessment of risks related to nutrition. The overall approach, however, must be adapted and modified to take into account the unique aspects of nutrients, including the fact that both high and low nutrient intakes are associated with risk. Experience with the application of a risk assessment process to the setting of upper levels of intake for essential nutrients, for example, has uncovered a number of challenges. Adapting and developing risk assessment strategies for application in nutrition science could lead to improved approaches to the development of dietary and nutritional recommendations and thus is a topic of considerable interest.

One nonscientific but overall challenge to nutritional risk assessment relates to increasing and improving communication among experts from key disciplines in ways that could inform the nutritional risk assessment process. Among these key disciplines are nutrition, toxicology, dietary exposure assessment, economics, risk analysis, and epidemiology. How can the perspectives and methods of these diverse fields be brought together to develop more effective approaches for quantitative nutritional risk assessment? How can they be applied to a spectrum of topics related to food and nutrition—micronutrients, macronutrients, dietary supplements, whole foods, food groups, and dietary patterns? How can they help overcome the data challenges that confront nutritional risk assessors?

As a step toward improving the communication and sharing methods and information across disciplines, members of the Interagency Risk Assessment Consortium, the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the Institute of Medicine''s Food Forum, and the International Life Sciences Institute planned the Nutritional Risk Assessment Workshop. The workshop was held on February 28 and March 1, 2007, in Washington, D.C. This workshop, which was envisioned as one in a series, focused on opening a dialogue to explore the unique questions and challenges faced by nutritionists and the potential use of risk assessment methodologies to answer them. Nutritional Risk Assessment : Perspectives, Methods, and Data Challenges, Workshop Summary summarizes the happenings of this workshop.

In what ways can the process for developing Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) be enhanced? The workshop entitled "The Development of DRIs 1994-2004: Lessons Learned and New Challenges" offered a valuable window into the issues and challenges inherent in the development of nutrient reference values. The dialogue—carried out under the auspices of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), Food and Nutrition Board (hereafter referred to jointly as the IOM)—was enriched by the 10 years of experience in deriving the expanded set of values known as the DRIs, plus the decades of experience that grounded the earlier Recommended Dietary Allowances for the United States and the Recommended Nutrient Intakes for Canada. The lessons learned and the knowledge gained will guide decisions about the next phase of the DRIs. To paraphrase one participant, we are now asking better questions.

The Institute of Medicine''s Food and Nutrition Board and the National Research Council''s Policy and Global Affairs Division convened a workshop in Washington, D.C., entitled Foodborne Disease and Public Health: An Iranian-American Workshop. The overall goals of this workshop were to facilitate the exchange of ideas about foodborne disease and public health and to promote further collaboration among Americans and Iranians on this topic of mutual interest. Experts invited to participate in this workshop addressed a variety of topics, ranging from the surveillance of outbreaks of foodborne illness to approaches to medical training in the Iranian and U.S. educational systems. The workshop was part of a series of cooperative efforts between the United States and Iran as the two countries have collaborated in the past on similar projects relating to foodborne disease.

As women of childbearing age have become heavier, the trade-off between maternal and child health created by variation in gestational weight gain has become more difficult to reconcile. Weight Gain During Pregnancy responds to the need for a reexamination of the 1990 Institute of Medicine guidelines for weight gain during pregnancy. It builds on the conceptual framework that underscored the 1990 weight gain guidelines and addresses the need to update them through a comprehensive review of the literature and independent analyses of existing databases. The book explores relationships between weight gain during pregnancy and a variety of factors (e.g., the mother''s weight and height before pregnancy) and places this in the context of the health of the infant and the mother, presenting specific, updated target ranges for weight gain during pregnancy and guidelines for proper measurement. New features of this book include a specific range of recommended gain for obese women.Weight Gain During Pregnancy is intended to assist practitioners who care for women of childbearing age, policy makers, educators, researchers, and the pregnant women themselves to understand the role of gestational weight gain and to provide them with the tools needed to promote optimal pregnancy outcomes.

Legal regulations and manufacturers'' monitoring practices have not been enough to prevent contamination of the national food supply and protect consumers from serious harm. In addressing food safety risks, regulators could perhaps better ensure the quality and safety of food by monitoring food production not just at a single point in production but all along the way, from farm to table.

Recognizing the troubled state of food safety, the Institute of Medicine''s (IOM) Food Forum met in Washington, DC, on September 9, 2008, to explore the management of food safety practices from the beginning of the supply chain to the marketplace.

Since 1941, Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) has been recognized as the most authoritative source of information on nutrient levels for healthy people. Since publication of the 10th edition in 1989, there has been rising awareness of the impact of nutrition on chronic disease. In light of new research findings and a growing public focus on nutrition and health, the expert panel responsible for formulation RDAs reviewed and expanded its approach—the result: Dietary Reference Intakes.

This new series of references greatly extends the scope and application of previous nutrient guidelines. For each nutrient the book presents what is known about how the nutrient functions in the human body, what the best method is to determine its requirements, which factors (caffeine or exercise, for example) may affect how it works, and how the nutrient may be related to chronic disease.

This volume of the series presents information about thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, folate, vitamin B12, pantothenic acid, biotin, and choline.

Based on analysis of nutrient metabolism in humans and data on intakes in the U.S. population, the committee recommends intakes for each age group—from the first days of life through childhood, sexual maturity, midlife, and the later years. Recommendations for pregnancy and lactation also are made, and the book identifies when intake of a nutrient may be too much. Representing a new paradigm for the nutrition community, Dietary Reference Intakes encompasses:

This new framework encompasses both essential nutrients and other food components thought to pay a role in health, such as dietary fiber. It incorporates functional endpoints and examines the relationship between dose and response in determining adequacy and the hazards of excess intake for each nutrient.