This collection of articles, published by The Lancet, describes the burden of maternal and child undernutrition in the developing world and highlights proven effective interventions to reduce stunting and micronutrient deficiencies.

Undernutrition is entirely preventable yet causes more than 3.5 million child deaths. It produces stunting, wasting and intrauterine growth restriction among other problems and is particularly prevalent in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and western Pacific.

The window of opportunity for tackling undernutrition is short: from pregnancy to two years of age. After the age of two, the damage on health and brain development caused by undernutrition is irreversible.

But, as the collection shows, there are plenty of interventions that have been proved to improve child nutrition. The most effective include breastfeeding counselling, vitamin A supplementation and zinc fortification.

This review article explores the evidence that inappropriate levels of certain nutrients before or just after birth can predispose some individuals to obesity and examines how this could be applied to a clinical setting.

The brain regulates appetite and food preferences and is highly sensitive to its nutritional environment in early life.

Newborn rats whose mothers were fed a low-protein, high-carbohydrate diet during pregnancy and lactation were more likely to choose high-fat food after weaning. These food preferences may be set during lactation. Tests on another group of rats revealed that newborns exposed to junk food such as doughnuts and crisps in the womb and during lactation were more likely to want that type of food. Newborns whose mothers switched from a junk-food to a healthier diet during lactation did not have this preference.

The authors suggest that hormones such as leptin — long thought to be a crucial factor in appetite regulation — are key in regulating the development of appetite in later life.

This paper explains how interdisciplinary collaboration in health, nutrition, and agriculture has helped the Millennium Villages Project in 12 African villages meet the Millennium Development Goals.

Global science is increasingly under pressure to become more interdisciplinary. Econutrition is a good example of a cross-sector concept that joins environmental and human health, focusing on crosscutting areas such as agriculture and ecology.

Soil erosion and decreasing biodiversity causes environmental damage that lowers food production. A lack of food results in malnutrition and illness that, in turn, lead to poorer labour productivity and poorer agricultural management.

The Millennium Villages Project emphasises community engagement and leadership, and the case study from the Nyanza Province near Lake Victoria in Kenya illustrates that this can work well in improving nutrition.

One-fifth of adults in the area have HIV and many have malaria and TB. People in the region go hungry for up to seven months a year and are malnourished. The villagers constructed a health clinic and organised teams of community healthcare workers trained in nutrition.

Farmers receive fertilisers and plants if they donate ten per cent of their harvest towards a school lunch programme that concentrates on providing missing nutrients. For example, by adding local crops such as sweet potatoes common vitamin A deficiencies are eliminated. The key to success, say the authors, is to ensure that farmers are supported, especially in producing a variety of crops.

This review examines the global 'nutrition transition', the ongoing shift in dietary patterns that results from socioeconomic and demographic change.

The author finds that while dietary changes are fairly well documented, other aspects such as how global media or activity-levels influence these changes are poorly recognised. For example, how the drop in manual labour that results as a society becomes more prosperous might affect activity levels.

The author takes an evolutionary view of the nutrition transition, acknowledging that populations have repeatedly striven to make food more plentiful and better tasting (which has often translated to more processed or higher calorie contents) and to expend as little physical energy in the process.

He argues that rapidly-developing countries must consider how to ensure that their richer, well-fed populations do not succumb to degenerative or chronic diseases. There is a strong economic incentive: sick populations drain the economy.

This article unpicks the links between nutrition and HIV/AIDS, and looks how to break the cycle between the two. Every year millions of dollars are pumped into tackling HIV/AIDS including antiretrovirals and research for vaccines and drugs. But poor nutrition remains a major barrier to preventing sickness and death from the virus.

The effects of poor nutrition on HIV status are clear: malnourishment weakens the immune system. But it also has indirect non-biological effects. For example, a lack of food can trigger dangerous coping strategies such as selling sex for food or selling assets, both of which lead to economic instability and a higher risk of HIV infection.

People with HIV are less able to absorb nutrients. And crucially, undernutrition also affects the ability of HIV-infected people to process antiretrovirals such as nevirapine.

The authors call for better targeting of food aid to HIV-infected people.

This paper reviews the emerging fields of nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics to explain how new analytical tools can investigate the link between diet and genes. Nutrigenetics studies single gene interactions, whereas nutrigenomics studies how genes interact with each other or with proteins and nutrients.

In the post-genomic era, nutrition is more than just eating well and getting a balance of vitamins and minerals — our genes significantly influence our nutritional needs and the way we process nutrients. The authors argue that understanding these fields is vital to improving nutrition worldwide.

An introduction to the basics of genomics explains how it has been used by pharmaceutical companies to create the field of pharmacogenetics, which has the potential to produce personalised therapies based on an individual's genes.

Some dietary links with illness — food allergies, for example — are straightforward. Others, such as in heart disease or obesity are more complex. The authors offer a fairly comprehensive overview of known links in both cases.

The health implications of studying the link between genes and diet are great, say the authors. For example, cancer or heart disease management relies on dietary modifications but patients often respond differently. A greater understanding of nutrigenetics could lead to better-tailored treatment.

This review article, published in the African Journal of Food Agriculture Nutrition and Development, considers how policy interventions can protect vulnerable African nations from the increasing nutrition insecurity caused by the global economic crisis.

The author, Suresh Babu from the International Food Policy Research Institute, argues that the global recession has reduced foreign investment in, and demand for exports from, developing countries.

This has resulted in unstable commodity prices, lower earnings and reduced access to food, forcing people to adopt cheaper and less balanced diets that lead to higher levels of malnutrition.

Babu reviews past crises, including Indonesia in the aftermath of El Niño in 1997, to build a framework of potential policy interventions.

In the short-term, this includes subsidising fertilisers, distributing nutrition supplements and providing income support. In the medium to long-term, social safety net programmes, investment in research, and institution building are needed, says Babu.

Cardiovascular diseases are set to rise dramatically in developing countries, partly because of an increase in risk factors for the diseases, which include diet, physical activity, smoking. The authors looked at cardiovascular disease risks such as being overweight or obese, systolic blood pressure, and total cholesterol, and related them to national income, food purchase constraints, and urbanisation. Body mass index (BMI) and cholesterol increased as national income increased, then flattened, and eventually declined. BMI also rose with increasing urbanisation.

The authors suggest that cardiovascular disease risks will increasingly be concentrated in low-income and middle-income countries. Thus, preventing obesity should be considered a priority in these countries, along with measures to control blood pressure, cholesterol, and tobacco use.