Customized / Personalized Nutrition for Better Health

Customized / Personalized Nutrition for Better Health

Customized / Personalized Nutrition for Better Health

Introduction:

In today's rapidly evolving world of science, health, economics, and technology, the challenges posed by a growing population and environmental concerns are becoming more pronounced. 

The increased use of chemicals in various aspects of life, including agriculture and food production, has led to adverse effects on human health. 

Traditional practices, plant extracts, and specific foods have been reported to address health issues (Vyas et al., 2018). 

Advances in analytical technology have allowed us to better understand the components of food, leading to the creation of various food products tailored to different groups based on age, health, and economic status. 

Additionally, advances in genome sequencing have opened up opportunities to study how genes interact with our diet, giving rise to the concept of personalized nutrition.

Understanding Personalized Nutrition

It's a well-known fact that the food we consume plays a significant role in causing common illnesses like heart disease, type II diabetes, and cancer (Micha et al., 2017). 

This emphasizes the importance of tailoring dietary habits to individual needs, as it can greatly impact behavior and overall health (Ordovas et al., 2018). 

Personalized nutrition involves using an individual's specific characteristics to provide tailored nutritional guidance, products, or services. Gibney et al. (2016) describe it as an approach that helps individuals make lasting changes to their dietary habits for better health.

Other terms like precision nutrition, nutrigenomics (Vyas et al., 2018), personalized tailored nutrition, and stratified nutrition are closely related to personalized nutrition. 

Some of these terms can be used interchangeably with personalized nutrition and personalized tailored nutrition. 

Both concepts focus on providing appropriate nutritional advice to individuals or groups. Nutrigenomics, on the other hand, delves into how gene products are influenced by nutrient intake and their resulting metabolic effects (Ordovas et al., 2018). 

Zeisel (2020) suggests that "precision nutrition" might be a more fitting term than "personalized nutrition," as it has the potential to categorize the entire population into different groups based on biomarker studies.

Essence of personalized nutrition :

In essence, personalized nutrition takes into account an individual's genetic, medical, phenotypic, nutritional, and other relevant information to provide specific recommendations for healthy eating. 

This approach can be applied to patients with specific dietary needs, such as lactating mothers, pregnant women, the elderly, and also to those looking to achieve personal goals like body shape, athletic performance, or dietary preferences (Pickering and Kiely, 2018). 

In the realm of personalized nutrition, researchers and stakeholders often focus on the genotypic and phenotypic characteristics of individuals. It's suggested that the effectiveness of personalization improves when a wide range of characteristics are considered (Riedl et al., 2017). 

This approach heavily relies on effective collaboration with participants, encouraging them to take responsibility for their behavior and, consequently, their health (Macready et al., 2018).

Content source courtesy:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7217104