Marleen Lentjes

About Marleen Lentjes

Marleen Lentjes (Maria) started as a nutritional epidemiologist at Örebro University in November 2018.  Her role involves working on observational and intervention research where diet/nutrition is considered as an exposure or outcome.

Marleen moved from the UK where she worked as a research nutritionist at the University of Cambridge with the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer, a longitudinal cohort based in Norfolk (EPIC-Norfolk).

Research

Marleen is currently contributing to development of a new birth cohort, for which the first validaton studies regarding dietary assessment are ongoing (more information about "Mat i Sverige" or "Eating in Sweden" can be found here).  She is also involved with the research in the Nutrient-Gut-Brain-Interaction research environment.

Marleen’s research interest is in meal patterns, i.e. the size, frequency and time of meals consumed, and how this relates to health.  These aspects of diet have been associated with diet quality and various markers of disease risk such as cholesterol, but also with obesity and heart disease itself.  This work connects to what is known as chrono-nutrition and relates to the many bodily functions which follow an approximate 24-hour clock, and which may be disturbed by ‘eating around the clock’ thereby disrupting these carefully orchestrated processes and increasing our risk of becoming overweight and our risk of diseases related to this.

Marleen's latest research projects at the EPIC-Norfolk study have included preparation and collection of dietary exposures for the 5th wave of data collection.  For this, she collaborated with UK Biobank and Oxford University.  The dietary data collection also aimed to understand more of the ‘why’ of dietary choices by asking about attitudes towards food & health, food preparation capabilities and peer pressure.

Teaching

Marleen is course coordinator for T6 ("Reproduktion och Utveckling") and basgrupphandledare at the medical programme at Örebro University.

Marleen is involved with the “Research Methods in Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics” course at Örebro University and lectures on Nutritional Epidemiology at Health Sciences.  Previously, she lectured on the MPhil module on Nutritional Epidemiology at Cambridge, focussing on nutritional assessment.  Marleen advises PhD students and has supervised BSc students.

Collaborations & assignments

Marleen is a participant in the university's Social Impact Lab (more information about her idea of a 'supermarket safari' can be found here).  Marleen continues to work on projects using data of the EPIC-Norfolk study and will be collaborating closely with the research teams in Cambridge and Oxford.