REVIEW Nutrition and neurodevelopment in children: focus on NUTRIMENTHE project Tania Anjos • Signe Altma ¨e • Pauline Emmett • Henning Tiemeier • Ricardo Closa-Monasterolo • Vero ´nica Luque • Sheila Wiseman • Miguel Pe ´rez-Garcı ´a • Eva Lattka • Hans Demmelmair • Bernadette Egan • Niels Straub • Hania Szajewska • Jayne Evans • Claire Horton • Tomas Paus • Elizabeth Isaacs • Jan Willem van Klinken • Berthold Koletzko • Cristina Campoy • The NUTRIMENTHE Research Group Received: 15 January 2013 / Accepted: 11 July 2013 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 Abstract There is growing evidence that early nutrition affects later cognitive performance. The idea that the diet of mothers, infants, and children could affect later mental per- formance has major implications for public health practice and policy development and for our understanding of human biology as well as for food product development, economic progress, and future wealth creation. To date, however, much of the evidence is from animal, retrospective studies and short-term nutritional intervention studies in humans. The positive effect of micronutrients on health, especially of pregnant women eating well to maximise their child’s cog- nitive and behavioural outcomes, is commonly acknowl- edged. The current evidence of an association between gestational nutrition and brain development in healthy chil- dren is more credible for folate, n-3 fatty acids, and iron. Recent findings highlight the fact that single-nutrient sup- plementation is less adequate than supplementation with more complex formulae. However, the optimal content of micronutrient supplementation and whether there is a long- term impact on child’s neurodevelopment needs to be investigated further. Moreover, it is also evident that future studies should take into account genetic heterogeneity when evaluating nutritional effects and also nutritional recom- mendations. The objective of the present review is to provide a background and update on the current knowledge linking nutrition to cognition and behaviour in children, and to show Tania Anjos and Signe Altma ¨e have contributed equally to this study. T. Anjos Á S. Altma ¨e Á C. Campoy (&) Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of Granada, Granada, Spain e-mail: ccampoy@ugr.es S. Altma ¨e e-mail: signealtmae@ugr.es P. Emmett School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK H. Tiemeier Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands R. Closa-Monasterolo Á V. Luque Paediatrics Research Unit, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, IISPV, Reus, Spain S. Wiseman Á J. W. van Klinken UNILEVER Research and Development, Vlaardingen, The Netherlands M. Pe ´rez-Garcı ´a Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain E. Lattka Research Unit of Molecular Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum Mu ¨nchen, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GmbH), Neuherberg, Germany H. Demmelmair Á B. Koletzko Hauner Children’s Hospital, University of Munich Medical Centre, Munich, Germany B. Egan Food, Consumers Behavior and Health Research Centre, School of Human Sciences, University of Surrey, Surrey, UK N. Straub Institute for Market Research, Strategy and Planning, Munich, Germany H. Szajewska 2nd Department of Pediatrics, Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland 123 Eur J Nutr DOI 10.1007/s00394-013-0560-4