Welcome back to the IUNS 80th anniversary series, “Nutrition Without Borders: 80 Years of IUNS”. The topic of this month is “ICNs: Where the Global Nutrition Community Meets, Shares, and Innovates”.
Since its earliest days, the IUNS has recognised that science advances fastest when people come together. One of the most powerful expressions of this belief is the International Congress of Nutrition (IUNS-ICN), which is the IUNS’s flagship global meeting held every four years. From a small gathering of nutrition scientists in the 1940s to today’s major scientific event attracting thousands of delegates from around the world, the IUNS-ICNs are where knowledge is shared, collaborations are formed, and the future of nutrition science is shaped.
A Forum for Global Exchange
The first IUNS‑linked International Congress of Nutrition took place shortly after the union was founded, bringing together researchers from a handful of countries to exchange findings and build scientific networks. Over the decades, these congresses have grown dramatically in scale and diversity. Where early meetings were largely academic and regional, today’s IUNS-ICNs are multi‑disciplinary, multi‑sectoral scientific gatherings.
By the late 20th century, IUNS-ICNs were drawing thousands of participants from all inhabited continents. Recent congresses, such as events in Buenos Aires, Granada, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Paris, have included plenary talks, symposia, posters, workshops, and networking events, reflecting the breadth of contemporary nutrition science.
These gatherings are not only about presenting research; they are about convening the community: professors and students, researchers and practitioners, policymakers and thought leaders, all under one roof to discuss evidence, debate ideas, and explore solutions to pressing global nutrition challenges.
ICN 2025: Sustainable Food for Global Health
The most recent congress, the 23rd IUNS‑ICN took place in Paris from 24–29 August 2025 under the theme “Sustainable Food for Global Health.” The event gathered thousands of participants from over 100 countries and showcased a rich scientific programme of plenary sessions, lectures, symposia, oral presentations, posters, and networking opportunities.
Topics spanned multiple facets of nutrition research and practice, including:
- The future of nutrition recommendations
- Climate change, sustainability, and nutrition
- Global health and planetary nutrition
- Public health nutrition across the life course
- Precision and clinical nutrition
- Non‑communicable diseases
- Basic research in nutrition
Organisers made a special effort to ensure representation from all continents, including support for young scientists and researchers from low‑ and middle‑income countries. In addition to scientific sessions, cultural and social programmes fostered community and exchange among participants.
IUNS-ICN 2025 also reaffirmed IUNS’s commitment to inclusivity, knowledge sharing, and global dialogue about the future of diets and nutrition in a changing world.
Looking Back and Ahead
From its modest beginnings to its current scale, the IUNS-ICN has become a cornerstone event in global nutrition science. It reflects how the field has expanded from early concerns about deficiencies to today’s multifaceted questions about sustainability, diet quality, chronic disease, and planetary health. The next congress, scheduled for Vancouver in 2029, promises to continue this tradition of rigorous science, inclusive exchange, and collaborative learning.
By bringing thousands of voices together on a regular cadence, ICNs ensure that global nutrition science continues advancing collectively, not in isolation, just as IUNS intended decades ago.
In September, our series continues with IUNS-ICNs Through the Decades: How the Global Nutrition Conversation Evolved. The next story looks back across the congresses to trace how early priorities such as deficiency diseases and protein-energy malnutrition expanded into today’s wider agenda of chronic disease, food systems, sustainability, and equity, showing how IUNS and the IUNS-ICNs have helped shape nutrition science in step with a changing world.
Source: https://iuns.org/2026/08/nutrition-with ... ing-place/
