OBJECTIVES: There is a growing interest in nutrition interventions to improve health, including both nutritional products and broader, public health, interventions to change diets. Although economic evaluation has been widely applied in the assessment of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, procedures, screening and vaccination programmes, nutrition interventions raise additional challenges. First, they can involve substantial personal expenditure as well as health system costs. Secondly, dietary changes can impact on a wide range of costs and benefits in sectors of the economy beyond the health sector. METHODS: We conducted a review of the literature on the economic evaluation of nutrition interventions and existing official methods guidelines, in order to explore whether existing methods were found to be adequate for assessing nutrition interventions. RESULTS: We found that some modifications of economic evaluation methods have been proposed, both by those conducting empirical studies and those proposing methods guidelines. These include modifications to the perspective for evaluations and the methods required to measure and value non-health effects. CONCLUSIONS: Some modifications of economic evaluation methods may be required for the assessment of nutrition interventions. However, these modifications relate mainly to the public health aspects of many of these interventions, rather than to inherent differences between nutritional products and other health-improving products such as pharmaceuticals.