For more than 50 years, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) has helped researchers understand the health and nutritional status of Americans and track how it changes over time. A special issue of Current Developments in Nutrition (CDN), a journal of the American Society for Nutrition, explores what 24 years of NHANES data reveal about the nutritional health of the U.S. population. The collection, The Nutrition Status of Americans Monitored Over 24 Years of NHANES, brings together research on nutritional biomarkers, changes in nutrition status over time, and factors that shape nutrition and health.
NHANES is one of the most comprehensive sources of information about the health and nutrition of people in the United States. The survey collects information from people of all ages, from young children to older adults, through interviews about diet and health habits, physical exams, and laboratory tests.
One of the greatest strengths of NHANES is that it represents people from across the United States, including different ages, backgrounds, and regions. This helps provide a more complete picture of the nutritional health of the population and allows researchers to identify changes and patterns over time.
CDN is ASN’s open-access journal that publishes original research articles, brief communications, reports on research methodology and study design, commentaries, and reviews. Developed in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), this special issue complements the CDC’s 2026 Nutrition Report. The report provides information on 131 biochemical indicators related to nutrition, including vitamins and other nutrients, using measurements collected through NHANES over a 24-year period.
The articles in the special issue highlight several areas of research included in the CDC Nutrition Report for the first time, including:
- Insights into omega-3 levels among U.S. population subgroups and what they may reveal about risk for cardiovascular health.
- Evaluation of how traditional biomarkers and cutoff values perform relative to a newer, combined approach for assessing vitamin B12 status.
- Analysis of different forms of folate in red blood cells and how they vary among people with different ages, lifestyles, and other health-related characteristics.
Together, these articles show how long-term nutrition monitoring can help researchers better understand changes in the nutritional health of Americans, identify areas for further study, and inform future research and public health efforts.
Explore the CDN special issue, The Nutrition Status of Americans Monitored Over 24 Years of NHANES, to learn more about the latest insights from one of the world’s most important nutrition surveillance programs.
