AM (Agnes) Berendsen, PhD MSc

Agnes Berendsen obtained her Bachelor in Nutrition & Dietetics in 2006. After working as dietician for several years, she decided to go to Wageningen to join the Master on Nutrition and Health. In 2010, she completed her Master by writing two theses on Nutritional Epidemiology & Public Health. Her PhD aimed at combating inflammageing by means of a one-year dietary intervention in an ageing European population including over 1,250 participants. In total, she works for over ten years at the division of Human Nutrition & Health from Wageningen University & Research. In the meantime, Agnes was also appointed as researcher at Rijnstate-Vitalys, Arnhem, the Netherlands, to implement nutrition research within the department of bariatric surgery. Agnes has expertise in studying nutrient adequacies and deficiencies in ageing populations by being part of the ILSI expert group focusing on the analysis of knowledge gaps between dietary requirements, intake, status and risks/benefits of adding macronutrients, micronutrients and specific food substances to foods. She has experience in setting up dietary intervention studies in humans. Additionally, she has analyzed large datasets among which the Nurses’ Health Study including over 130,000 participants, and collaborated in multidisciplinary and transnational projects. Besides research, Agnes has supervised numerous BSc and MSc students and she has been actively involved in teaching MSc courses.

After three years of investing in the epidemiology curriculum of HNH, she got appointed as assistant professor in 2022. Now, she continues to teach epidemiology courses, but has extened the curriculum with a course on 'Nutrition & Obesity Treatment'. With respect to research, Agnes studies nutritional consequences of obesity treatment including both pharmacological and surgical treatment, pregnancy outcomes of women after obesity treatment and she also contributes to understanding the mechanisms involved in (disproportionate) muscle mass-loss, which is typically induced by obesity treatment. Additionally, she tries to capture how dietary patterns change after obesity treatment and how these changes can be related to long-term health outcomes of women undergoing either surgical or pharmacological obesity treatment.