Personalised nutrition is set to change your world

Personalised nutrition is set to change your world

Ever tried a diet plan quiz? Like: take our 30 second quiz and discover which foods you should avoid based on your blood type, age, hair length and nail growing speed. Then you’ve dipped your toe into the personalised nutrition space.

One-size-fits-all is a broken, outdated idea, predicated on making as much money as possible from health and wellness: pharmaceutical companies want one drug they can sell to as many people as possible; diet plans are catered to the masses, convincing us that one way of eating can make us all lose weight; and nutrition advice in general aims to improve the health of the lowest common denominator. Humans are beautifully diverse and complex; just as no two people have identical faces, neither are they exactly alike on a molecular level. This applies to twins too; sharing DNA does not mean you have exactly the same gut microbiome.

While the health and wellness industry suffers a bad reputation for selling the idea of magic bullets (take this one supplement and you’ll get thin!), the professionals and researchers are working diligently on bringing personalised nutrition to the general public; and they’re right to do so. It’s not about the simple quiz that will elucidate exactly why you can’t stick to a diet; it’s about the metabolic outcome of particular dietary interventions. If you’ve ever wondered why every carb you eat goes to your hips, while your friends are able to indulge with impunity, rest assured it’s not your imagination. Research has shown some people process carbohydrates differently than others and knowing how your body works can be the most advantageous approach to dieting and overall health. It’s all in your DNA: a single nucleotide polymorphism or change can determine why monitoring your carb intake is a critical factor for you, while others may have to watch their fat intake. In other words; why low-carb works for you, and paleo works for them.

Who can say they make their dietary choices using such scientific rigour? We are used to choosing our food by its taste, sight, smell… food is a sensory and cultural experience. But if you’re already used to measuring your BMI and resting heart rate, or maybe you’re a Fitbit fan, then you’re likely already interested in taking the personalised approach to your health—and this is where macronutrient calculations come into play. Many of us are already examining our diets and discovering what works for us—personalised nutrition is the next step.

The difference between a diet plan and a personalised nutrition solution is the data—you need to measure something and then take action based on that measurement. It’s important to note personalised nutrition is about much more than losing weight; it’s marrying a healthy diet with improving your overall health. The more we learn about how our diet interacts with our genes, the more we can reduce our risk for diabetes and heart disease, for example. A genes testing kit can offer insight to your predisposition to a disease—a statistical risk based on your genetic makeup—and is an important starting point; once you have this knowledge, you can change your diet to mitigate your risk. This is one example of personalised nutrition—it can be as simple as knowing you may be more likely to develop heart disease and tailoring your diet to include heart-protecting nutrients. It’s the evolution of the diet quiz with far more research: take this test and discover how to look after yourself.

Understanding the health benefits of certain nutrients is crucial to choosing the foods right for you and this is where companies can step up to help. Nutrients can mitigate inflammation, reduce risk of certain diseases, support bone health, change insulin sensitivity, and influence your microbiome—and affect different people in different ways. For polyphenols like resveratrol, its antioxidant effects may be well known but it also exerts influence on our genes: it can block or induce specific effects depending on the coding an individual has. The science can be complex and inaccessible to the average person but we can leave the esoterica to the experts. We simply need to recognise when we need to add these foods to our diets and understand the basics of how they will make us healthier.

Personalised nutrition can be described as the opportunity to reprogram your genetic destiny—that’s how powerful it can be. And it’s not a new and revolutionary view of health: Eastern approaches have always considered the individual. Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Korean Sasang constitution medicine, and Traditional Japanese Medicine feature holistic and individual classification systems that prioritise a personalised approach for optimal results. And modern studies have shown you’re far more likely to comply with a dietary recommendation if it has been designed specifically for you; after all, compliance to any regimen is likely to be successful if the benefits are noticeable, which they will be if they’re tailored to you!

Personalising nutrition means we can adopt a healthier lifestyle by getting the right nutrients at the right time; we can use measurements and data to customise our diet plans and nutrient intake. Measuring is not as simple as recording what you’re eating and when: if you eat plenty of carrots, you’d expect to have high levels of vitamin A, but if you boil your carrots, you’ll have a lower vitamin intake than if you’d roasted or steamed them. The most effective way of determining your nutrient levels is testing your blood, an unsavoury idea for most of us! Blood tests also require sending your blood off to a lab to be analysed raising ethical, hygiene and time concerns—and this is where progress has stalled. We know how nutrients can help, we have the internet primed and ready to deliver our results and recommended dietary changes, but we have no fast, non-invasive method to gather the information we need in the first place.

But this is on its way. Technology companies are partnering with health companies and it’s just a matter of time before we have something we can all use with ease and speed. Personalised nutrition is investigating the complex interaction between the nutrients we consume and our genetic makeup and for now, we need to stand by: this is going to be big.