SANGEETHA SHYAM

“Nuts for Improved Diet Quality and Health in Asia” – Nutrition transition and westernization of diets that followed the rapid economic growth in the last decades has led to widespread poor diet quality and double burden of malnutrition in Asia.
Improving diet quality has shown promise to improve health in Asian populations. Tree nuts and peanuts are among the food groups that can improve diet quality in this population and are consumed at less than optimal levels. This presentation will collate evidence from the few keys RCTs investigating the role of nuts in health conducted in the Asian region within the last 3 years or so. The presentation will propose potential focus areas of research that will benefit the region.

Dr. Sangeetha Shyam is a Miguel Servet Investigator at the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute, Spain. This is a competitive position supported by the Carlos III Health Institute, Spain to incorporate experienced researchers within the Spanish National Health System. Between 2022 and 2024, she held the Maria Zambrano Fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Universities to attract international talent and was hosted at the Rovira i Virgili University. Prior to moving to Spain, Dr. Shyam was a Senior Lecturer and a Research Fellow at the International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She comes with over a decade of experience in teaching, research supervision and academic administration. She is a member of the Federation of European Nutrition Societies Working Group to Improving Standards in the Science of Nutrition. She was also a team member of the FAO’s High-Level Panel of Experts for Project 17 on Food Security and Nutrition Datas. She was a selected participant to the Interstellar Initiative 2021 of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Japanese Agency for Medical Research and Development for world’s promising early-career investigators.

Committed to creating an evidence-base for nutrition, she has collaborated with the Malaysian Institute of Public Health, Spanish PREDIMED and PREDIMED-Plus research groups and the University of Leeds (UK) in leading teams to study diet-disease relationships. A recipient of the BASF Newtrition Asia Grant, she has also led contract research projects in food and nutrition.

She is an elected Fellow of the Nutrition Society of Malaysia and a member of the American Society of Nutrition. She leads the ACTIVATOR Asian Decadal Nutrition Evaluation, Reflection and Galvanizing Efforts for Future project.

She has published in top-tiered international journals in nutrition and has contributed to academic book chapters. She is an Associate Editor for the Malaysian Journal of Nutrition, and an Academic Editor for PLOS Global Health and Nature Scientific Reports.