Federal funding for nutrition research has grown

USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) are the lead Federal agencies that conduct human nutrition research. Federal financial investments in nutrition research more than doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars from 1985 to 2009, growing at an average annual rate of 3 percent. All of this growth was due to increased DHHS funding, especially between 1999 and 2003. In those 5 years, Congress implemented its plan to double the budget of the National Institutes of Health, the lead agency within DHHS supporting nutrition research. USDA funding fell at an average annual rate of 1.4 percent between 1985 and 2009. Over the 25-year period, USDA’s share of total Federal support fell from 21 to 7 percent, and DHHS’s share rose from 79 to 93 percent. This chart appears in the ERS report, Improving Health Through Nutrition Research: An Overview of the U.S. Nutrition Research System, January 2015.