Liesbeth wants to have an impact on public health by creating public health messages that make a difference.

All her life, Liesbeth has been fascinated by the effects nutrition has on health. By the age of fourteen she read all books on nutrition from the public library and has been hungry for more.

She got her Masters degree in Nutrition and Health at Wageningen University in The Netherlands and then moved to Boston. At Harvard School of Public Health she did research into trans fatty acids, was involved in efforts to reduce sugar sweetened beverage consumption and helped with The Nutrition Source web site from the department of Nutrition. Now she is doing research into trans fatty acids at VU University Amsterdam.

"Healthy food choices – together with physical activity and not smoking – can prevent over 80% of coronary heart disease, 70% of stroke, and 90% of type 2 diabetes." - Willett, 2006

Goals

  • Innovating nutrition research
  • Using web 2.0 technology to improve public health
  • Developing new ways of how to inform people
  • Being happy

Personalized Nutrition

December 31, 2009 My column @ Ergogenics.org (Dutch)

For 300 dollars you can send some of your DNA to a company who will analyze it for small mistakes. These small mistakes in your DNA are called single nucleotide polymorphisms (or SNP's) and tell something about your risk of getting diseases. But if this knowledge will make you healthier, that is not so clear. Regardless of any increased risk, eating healthy will prevent most chronic diseases anyways. So let's start there...

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