Research Institute for Child Nutrition
The Research Institute for Child Nutrition (FKE) was founded in 1964 by the Förderergesellschaft Kinderernahrung e. V. founded in Dortmund and since 1966 has dealt with the improvement of health and development in growing age through an optimized diet .
The aim of the scientific work of the FKE was to record and assess the nutritional behavior of healthy children in Germany. Until 1998 the research institute for child nutrition belonged to the so called " blue list ". The Dortmund Research Institute for Child Nutrition was closed in 2018.
In 1985 Friedrich Manz started the central research project of the FKE, the DONALD (Dortmund Nutritional and Anthropometric Longitudinally Designed study) to investigate the interrelationships between nutrition, growth and health in growing age. Since 2012, the DONALD study has been continued by the University of Bonn at the previous location in Dortmund-Brünninghausen.
Since the beginning of 2017, the work of the former FKE Dortmund has been continued in the new Child Nutrition Research Department (FKE) of the University Children's Hospital in Bochum . Here they are combined with pediatric nutritional medicine and the care of sick children in clinics and practices.
In terms of content, the FKE concentrates on the nutrition of infants, children and adolescents between the ages of 1 and 18, in accordance with the 'Life Cycle Approach'. The starting point is the nutritional recommendations of the FKE in the form of preventive concepts for a healthy diet right from the start: the nutrition plan for the first year of life and the optimized mixed diet for children and adolescents . These concepts are constantly being further developed as prototypes of food and meal-based recommendations.
In its research work, the FKE examines the feasibility and effectiveness of dietary recommendations for healthy and sick children and possibilities for a successful transfer of scientific knowledge to multipliers and into the everyday reality of children.
Overall, the research topics of the FKE form a continuum from basic research and clinical studies through epidemiology & public health to communication research and the transfer of knowledge in the sense of translational medicine .
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