LLEK10249U Evidence, Diet and Health

Volume 2025/2026
Education

MSc Programme in Human Nutrition

Content

The focus of the course is how to assess available evidence for a causal relationship between lifestyle factors and diseases with a main focus on diets, foods, macronutrients and non-communicable diseases such as type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The course will provide the students with teaching in various methodological aspects and exercises and assignments that give them the opportunity to practise their skills and competences in evidence evaluation.

Learning Outcome

The main objective of the course is to provide the students with an understanding of basic methods and concepts in nutritional epidemiology, to enable them to assess available evidence for causal relationships between diet and health.

After completion of the course the students should be able to:

Knowledge:

  • Define epidemiology and causality
  • Describe the epidemiological measures of frequency and association
  • Define and explain the concepts bias, confounding, effect modification, chance, power, validity and generalizability
  • Classify epidemiological study designs, and describe their advantages and limitations in nutritional research


Skills:

  • Demonstrate ability to read and understand results in scientific papers on epidemiological studies 
  • Evaluate strategies for statistical analysis in different types of epidemiological studies
  • Critically assess the validity of studies on diet-health relationships
  • Discuss the evidence for causal relationships between diet and health
  • Make appropriate academic arguments in a discussion of epidemiological evidence 


Competences:

  • Perform evidence evaluations of relationships between dietary components and health
  • Identify gaps in current knowledge and contribute to the planning of epidemiological studies 
  • Make dietary recommendations based on an evaluation of the evidence
Literature

All material for the course will be made available at study start on the course’s Absalon page.

Academic qualifications equivalent to a BSc degree are recommended.
Knowledge and skills in nutrition, physiology, biochemistry, and statistics are recommended.
Theoretical lectures and exercise practice. The objective of course assignments is to use of the principles in evaluation of scientific evidence.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Lectures
  • 16
  • Preparation
  • 70
  • Exercises
  • 52
  • Exam Preparation
  • 20
  • Exam
  • 48
  • Total
  • 206
Continuous feedback during the course of the semester

We provide feedback on the written assignments in plenum.

Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Oral examination, 20 minutes (48-hour preparation time)
Type of assessment details
The students will be given two papers to read 48 hours prior to the exam. They are allowed to meet and discuss the papers for the exam. The oral exam will take 20 minutes, where we will discuss selected aspects of the papers, aiming to check all three levels of competences. The evaluation will consider skills mainly from the strength of the arguments and an overall evaluation of their performance.
Examination prerequisites

Approval of written assignments during the course.

Aid
No aids allowed

No aids are allowed for the oral exam, this includes notes.

Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
No external censorship
Several internal examiners
Re-exam

Same as the ordinary exam.


The requirements for registration have to be fulfilled before re-exam. All assignments must be handed in no later than 3 weeks before reexamination. Assignments must be approved no later than 2 weeks before reexamination.

Criteria for exam assesment

See Learning Outcome