Pioneering Research Investigates How a Plant-Based Diet Could Prevent Chronic Illness

The John Innes Center will co-lead a pioneering research program investigating how a plant-based diet could prevent chronic illness.

The Edesia: Plants, Food and Health Ph.D. program aims to advance understanding of plant-based nutrition from crop to clinic, initiating a step-change in nutritional research in the UK and addressing diet-related illness globally.

Named after the Roman goddess of food who emphasized the good things we get from our diets, Edesia reflects a growing recognition that plant-based foods are critical in tackling chronic illnesses such as cancers, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

The unique cross-disciplinary Ph.D. program draws together the world-class research expertise of the Norwich Research Park in a collaboration that includes the University of East Anglia (UEA), the John Innes Center, Quadram Institute, and Earlham Institute.

25 Edesia students – five each year over a five-year period – will work to unravel the complex inter-relationship between plant-based foods, metabolism, gut microbiota, and health outcomes.

The first Ph.D. students will take up places in autumn 2020. The £5m award is part of £127m funding announced by the Wellcome Trust to support 23 new Ph.D. programs.

The program will increase opportunities for metabolic engineering and optimizing crops through state-of-the-art approaches such as speed breeding and genome editing.

Co-director of the program Professor Cathie Martin FRS from the John Innes Center said: “The loss of plant-based, unrefined foods from the human diet means more people are burdened with nutritional insecurity and associated chronic illnesses.

“Understanding how plant-based foods promote and protect health will underpin effective future dietary recommendations, food choices, and food production. If we want to improve the health of future societies worldwide we need more evidence and this program will start to address that.”

Fruit and vegetables supply the most essential vitamins and micronutrients as well as fiber, resistant starch, polyphenols, flavonoids, and carotenoids in the human diet.

But these benefits have been poorly understood or overshadowed by the concentration on caloric intake over the past 40 years.

Professor Ian Clark from the UEA, director of the program, said: “The largest burden on the NHS stems from poor diet and food-related ill health, costing around £5.8 billion per year.

“The evidence shows that optimized diets play a major role in improving health, with plant-based diets also a key to environmental sustainability.”

The 2017 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) report estimated that dietary changes could prevent more than 50% of contemporary public health problems.

Earlier this year the EAT-Lancet Commission report (Willet et al 2019) highlighted that food represents one of the greatest health and environmental challenges of the 21st century and stressed the urgent need to focus on high-plant food diets.

The report calculated that a change to high plant-based foods from limited animal food/unhealthy foods would prevent an overall 11 million deaths per year.

The Edesia program also addresses several UN sustainable development goals on hunger, poverty, inequality, responsible consumption patterns, and climate action.

Professor Ian Charles, director of the Quadram Institute, said: “Understanding the impacts of food on health is a complex challenge, which demands an interdisciplinary approach that combines complementary expertise. This program will allow a new generation of Ph.D. students to benefit from that expertise across the institutes of the Norwich Research Park and equip them with the skills and knowledge to address nutritional challenges society is facing.”

The Wellcome funding signals a new approach to blend scientific excellence with a commitment to improving research culture. The program includes holistic support for the personal, professional, and technical development of students during their Ph.D. and in the transition to the next stage of their careers.

Anne-Marie Coriat, head of UK and Europe Research Landscape at Wellcome, said: “Excellence in science and culture can exist side by side. Each of the funded programs is built on high-quality research training that will explore a wide range of exciting topics, from understanding the inner workings of distinct cell types to public health economics, from plant-based nutrition to health data science.

“At the same time, we’ve seen new ways that we can work together as a community to bring science and culture together, placing both firmly at the heart of what we do.”

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