Welcome to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Children’s Nutrition Research Center (CNRC) at Baylor College of Medicine, located in the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest complex of biomedical science and healthcare institutions. The CNRC was founded in 1978 by Buford Nichols, Jr., M.D., and was led previously by Dennis Bier, M.D. Now, I am honored to carry the torch that seeks to enhance the nutritional health of every child and every adult they will become. For over 45 years, the CNRC has focused on improving the health of Americans through research that enhances diet quality and promotes healthy eating habits. Our innovative research investigators, trainees, and dedicated staff view nutrition through many lenses from basic biochemistry, to model organism development, to human studies – all aimed at ultimately asking questions about how and why children choose to eat the foods they eat, where those foods come from, how they affect children’s health early on and later in life, how parents’ food choices affect their children’s health, and how the way food is grown and marketed contributes to children’s health, to name just a few of the many areas we study.
We take an inter- and multidisciplinary approach to research, using animal models, clinical trials, epidemiology, lab and field work, computational science, genetics, economics, family relationships, physiology, psychology, and any other method or discipline that helps us learn. Our 11-story building houses core scientific laboratories focused on studying body composition, metabolism, calorimetry, stable isotope/mass spectrometry, plant physiology, and much more. Our researchers are making a profound impact both nationally and here in Texas, spanning the full range of the American population and urban and rural environments and helping American farmers to produce healthier foods.
At the CNRC, we are committed to inspired and groundbreaking science that is, above all, trustworthy. We want science to be trusted, and we want to earn that trust through careful, thorough, and rigorous research. We welcome your inquiries, your collaboration, and your ideas for new research questions that will further enhance our study of nutrition for the benefit of our children and their families. Together, we will dare to light the candle of science in the darkness.