Nutrition in early life, a critical period for human development, can have long-term effects on health in adulthood. The importance of nutrition for health was first recognized through the association between suboptimal diet and deficiency diseases such as scurvy, beriberi and rickets and stunting in children.Early priorities in healthcare therefore focused on defining and providing nutritionally-adequate diets that could support growth and development.Historically, the greatest challenge has been to provide enough food to feed the world’s ever-increasing population. How-ever, while under nutrition remains a problem, the nutritional transition occurring in many developing countries has increased the prevalence of poverty as well as obesity. Keywords: Impact; Early nutrition; Long term health.