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Infant and young child feeding
Infancy and early childhood are among the most critical periods of human development. During these early years, nutrition plays a central role in shaping growth, health and development outcomes that can last a lifetime. Ensuring access to safe, adequate and age‑appropriate nutrition during this period is essential.
Breastfeeding, formula feeding, mixed feeding, home prepared food, manufactured baby food and nutrition supplementation form the options to provide the necessary combination of nutrients to achieve optimal growth and development.
Nutritional care & healthy ageing
Good nutrition is fundamental to health, wellbeing, functional ability, and quality of life at all ages. Across the life course, people may experience nutritional challenges for different reasons. Two related but distinct concepts are particularly important to understand: nutritional deficiencies and disease‑related malnutrition.
Nutritional deficiencies are common in the general population and are especially relevant in the context of healthy ageing. Disease‑related malnutrition, by contrast, is a clinical condition that arises as a consequence of illness. While distinct, these two conditions are closely linked: nutritional deficiencies reduce nutritional reserves and increase vulnerability to disease‑related malnutrition when illness occurs.
Effective nutritional care, including the appropriate use of specialised nutrition products, is therefore an essential component of healthy ageing and patient-centred care.
ISO Standard for Malnutrition Prevention, Detection, and Treatment
Malnutrition in hospitals is a critical and global clinical issue that affects up to 50% of in-patients worldwide. It is often not detected, treated or diagnosed. Patients with malnutrition in hospital have an increased length of stay, more complications and readmissions, and are at greater risk of mortality. In addition, the costs associated with malnutrition in hospitalised patients is significant.
As malnutrition care in hospitals is often inadequate, international standardisation practices can help to harmonise care across countries. Therefore, ISDI is working within ISO Technical Committee 34 – Food products to develop an ISO standard for Malnutrition Prevention, Detection, and Treatment on the basis of the Standards Council of Canada standard CAN/HSO 5066:2021.