In Italy, public health is experiencing a phase of crisis. A contraction of services and a staff reallocation have affected in particular Food Hygiene services. We explored Pubmed and Google Ngram Viewer© to define the state of the art of research in food and nutritional field from a quantitative point of view and we focused on some areas of interest in terms of improvement of professional practice. The Italian contribution to food and nutritional research is still limited. Our findings seem to demonstrate the need of an alliance between the world of research and Public Health services, so as to develop a sustainable and effective health system.