Wija van Staveren, Wageningen (The Netherlands).

It is a real pleasure for me to write an editorial in this volume of the Journal of Nutrition, Health and Ageing. The second part of the proceedings of the European Congress on Nutrition and Health in the Elderly is published in this issue. You will read about a great variety of topics. When you have read in the December volume of this Journal about geographical differences in fruit and vegetable consumption in older Europeans, you may like to read in this volume about the differences in the same groups in 10-year mortality. Further you may like to be informed about the physical performance of these Europeans and about their health-related quality of life. These results mainly come from the SENECA (Survey in Europe on Nutrition and the Elderly, a Concerted Action). There are of course also reports from other areas in addition to trials in nursing homes.
Also interesting to read are reviews on topics such as "folate, vitamin B12 and vitamin B6 and one carbon metabolism", "serum homocysteine as an indicator of the nutritional status", "improving appetite in elderly people" and "energy balance and malnutrition in institutionalised elderly people".
When you turn over the leaves of this volume you will see a lot more topics. We hope you will enjoy reading it and we hope also that it makes you enthusiastic for the next conference. We just have heard from the organisers that it will take place from 25-27 November in 2004 in Toulouse. You certainly will hear more about it. During this conference we will discuss again the progress in the nutritional science related to ageing and also discuss implementation programs of all the issues we learned. Ultimately our goal is better nutrition and health for the oldest generation.