The current large-scale nutrition-supplementation programmes for pregnant women and young children provide good opportunities for the research community to answer some of the unsolved issues.
A large community-based randomized trial with combinations of food and micronutrient supplements to pregnant women is currently underway in Matlab, Bangladesh, where pre-pregnancy weight measurements, careful monitoring and assessment over the entire pregnancy cycle are enabled by the running Health and Demographic Surveillance System. Hopefully, that trial and other future studies can improve the knowledge base for nutrition interventions in pregnancy.