As highlighted in previous Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, nutrition has gained increasing attention as a key lifestyle factor influencing health and disease prevention worldwide. However, widely used methods for assessing diet’s impact on health have well-documented limitations. These include longstanding challenges in nutritional epidemiology, an overreliance on the absence of disease to define health, inaccuracies in self-reported dietary data and imprecise nutrient intake measurements due to variability in food composition. Recent innovations, however, are advancing the field through objective biomarkers of health and nutrient intake, as well as personalized devices — demonstrating the crucial role and opportunity for chemistry. These approaches enhance scientific rigor in nutrition and health research, leading to more reliable and high-quality outcomes. In this context, the panel will explore how chemistry and today’s chemists can unlock meaningful insights and elevate research quality in health and nutrition.