Advertisement

Personalized nutrition eyed as strategy to improve public health in Europe

A low-cost, peer-led diet program called TOPS could help you throw away those "fat jeans" once and for all, according to a new study

Receiving personalized nutrition advice and food plans could lead to healthier diets everywhere, according to a new study by the Europe-based project Food4Me, a pioneer in the field of "nutrigenomics."

Dietary advice should be personalized, they say, based on individuals' genotypic and phenotypic information because genes express themselves differently from person to person depending on what they eat.

Phenotype is a reference to a person's physical traits and morphology.

The internet-based study was conducted over six months and involved 5,562 participants representing seven countries in the EU.

Participants received one of several interventions at random, all of which except for the control group involved some degree of personalized nutrition (PN).

The control group received standardized, European healthy eating guidelines without PN; another group received PN based on their dietary intake data; a group received PN based on their diets and their phenotypic data and another group received PN based on diet, phenotypic and genotypic data.

Participants ranged in age from 18 to 79 years old and the mean age -- shared by a total of 1,607 of them -- was 39.8.

Women made up 60.9 percent of the total participants and 96.7 of the total participants were from white-European origins.

Participants had a mean Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25.5, meaning they were mostly at a normal weight.

Dietary goals such as decreasing salt intake and increasing monounsaturated fat were determined by tallying dietary, phenotypic and genotypic markers in compliance with European eating guidelines.

Diet quality was assessed based upon results of the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), which was involved calculating the following components: Empty calories, fatty acids, proteins, salt, refined grains, whole grains, total fruit, whole fruit, vegetables, greens and beans and dairy products.

Researchers concluded that regardless of the intervention in which participants engaged, all were favorable to the control group.

Calculating phenotypic or genetic information into the formula appeared to provide no additional advantage.

Having some degree of personalized nutrition resulted in significantly healthier diets, an increase of B vitamin intake and reduced consumption of red meat, salt and saturated fat than those who took part in the standardized, control group intervention.

Pleased with their results, supporters of the project say it proves PA could be carried out over the Internet.

The study is available in PDF: http://www.food4me.org/images/White_Paper/food4me_white_paper-7-04-15.pdf

http://food4me.org/