Infant, Early Years and Specialised Nutrition Services

Infant and Early Years

A varied nutritionally balanced diet is especially important in the early years as infants and children grow rapidly. It’s a time when good dietary habits should be established to support normal growth and development. Products specially manufactured for this age group have an important role in meeting infants and young children’s nutritional requirements and contributing to the overall nutritional value of healthy diets.

Specialised Nutrition

There are many acute and chronic disorders that benefit from tailored nutritional intervention. A restricted/modified diet to manage disease may require specialised products to achieve nutritional requirements. Having worked in the medical food industry, we have experience in many aspects of Research & Development.

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Nutritional aspects of product design and recipe development

We have extensive experience in designing infant, toddler and dietetic foods (also known as medical foods and foods for special medical purposes) to fit with restricted diets or as a sole source of nutrition for various age groups (e.g. paediatric requirements) and clinical conditions (e.g. metabolic disorders and food allergy) for international markets.  We have worked with a range of clinicians and dietitians from different therapeutic areas, including paediatric and adult patient groups.

We can help you by:

  • Developing concepts and driving forward nutrition-focused product innovation opportunities.
  • Providing nutritional advice on recipe development and devising the nutrient content of formulations. For example, product design for particular populations subgroups (e.g. children) or geographic requirements.
  • Providing advice on vitamin and mineral fortification strategies to meet nutritional requirements and that are in line with any regulatory requirements.
  • Reviewing the nutritional specifications of products.

Scientific support on nutrition and health

There is a wealth of information in the medical and scientific literature on the relationship between diet, health and disease.

We can help you by:

  • Reviewing relevant scientific evidence in the context of population subgroups and clinical practice.
  • Generating tailored reports for various applications including new product innovation, product registration and product literature to professionals or consumers.  We are experienced at writing literature for both consumers and professionals.
  • Producing company position statements, guidance for Helpline staff and consumer education campaigns on topical issues in nutrition.

Human Nutrition Studies

As well as drawing on the scientific literature, product-specific evidence will often be required to support registration and use of an infant product or specialised medical food. We have broad experience undertaking nutrition studies to Good Clinical Practice (GCP) requirements. Establishing the efficacy of product claims may require collection of human data to determine the effects of changes to a product’s nutritional specification.

We can help you by:

  • Advising on the design of (clinical) nutrition studies.
  • Developing and writing scientifically robust study protocols.
  • Reviewing existing or proposed protocols.
  • Advising on clinical trial requirements and outcomes to meet international regulatory requirements in particular for the UK and USA.
  • Generating clinical trial reports.
  • Preparing manuscripts for publication.