Bionutrition

Goals

The Bionutrition Unit provides support for the nutritional components of all GCRC inpatient and outpatient studies. The NIH supports a metabolic kitchen for the provision of research diets. Our primary mission is to give investigators the necessary resources to plan and conduct research that demand sophisticated nutritional support and to provide nutritional services to study participants.

Staff

The Research Bionutrition Unit consists of a Research Nutrition Manager (Donna Caseria, MS, RD, CD-N), Research Nutrition Coordinator (Mary Savoye, RD, CD-N, CDE), and two research hostesses. The primary role of the research hostesses is the preparation of controlled research diets. The staff has extensive experience in adult and pediatric research, and the Unit supports nutritional research in each of these populations.

Services

• Protocol Development: Consult and assist with protocol development and implementation.
• Nutritional Assessment: Provide comprehensive evaluation of nutritional status, including medical background, activity/lifestyle factors, anthropometrics, and laboratory values.
• Diet Education & Counseling: Provide instructions for dietary regimens, nutrition education (individual and group), and monitoring of compliance to the diet.
• Research Diets: Design weighed, nutrient-controlled, and therapeutic/modified diets; develop menus and recipes.
• Metabolic Kitchen: Prepare weighed diets for inpatient and outpatient research subjects.
• Anthropometrics: Measure height, weight, body mass index, head, arm, waist or hip circumferences, skinfolds, and bioelectrical impedence (BIA).
• Assist with screening potential subjects for dietary investigation.
• Dietary Data Collection: Obtain food diaries, dietary recalls and histories, and food frequency questionnaires.
• Nutrition Analysis: Provide computerized analysis of dietary intake using both the Nutrient Data Systems (NDS) and Food Processor.

Metabolic Kitchen Hours of Operation: The Kitchen is staffed 7 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday. Research subjects obtain up to two days of food per visit. Diets can be manipulated in a single nutrient or multiple nutrients. These diets can serve to control confounding variables and/or serve as the experimental model.

Please contact the Research Manager if planning to use controlled feeding in your methodologies. Examples of controlled nutrient meals are carbohydrate-controlled meals, diets manipulated in type and quantity of dietary protein, and liquid diets with specific distributions of macronutrients.

Education

In accordance with the GCRC mission, the Research Manager and Coordinator precept Yale New Haven Hospital dietetic interns and University of New Haven and Gateway Community College dietetic students. This training site teaches students an array of pediatric and adult research methods.

Accomplishments

The bionutritionists serve as co-investigators for multiple studies. They have published several abstracts and peer-reviewed journal articles. They also are integral members of the National Association of GCRC Bionutritionists.

Contact Information

Contact Information: Donna Caseria (203) 688-4731; Mary Savoye (203) 737-4384.