Page 46 - FoodFocusThailand No.163 October 2019

STRATEGIC R&D
STRATEGIC R&D

Personalized Nutrition

“No disease is a wonderful fortune” This is the phrase that everyone knows. Having good health without any
disease is the goal of everyone. Especially, nowadays the trend of non-communicable diseases is increasing
and this is due to diet and exercise. Therefore, people pay attention to what they eat. People is looking for
diet that was designed and claimed that it is healthy, is able to support health, increase body performance
and reduce risk for particular diseases.

With the needs of consumers and growing trend of non- Mediterranean diets), depends on the genotype of the individual. In
communicable diseases, bio-functionalities of dietary ingredients another word, nutrigenetics is the study that investigates the effect
have been extensively studied to be used as functional ingredients. of genetic variation on dietary responses. Although individuals may
Many dietary components have been reported about the potential share the same genome, it is estimated that there are more than 10
to reduce risk for diseases. However, there is no the best diet or the million Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) that are presented
best dietary components that can be effective with any gender, age in at least 1% of the population. However, only a small number of
or health condition or there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach. SNPs have a functional effect. Therefore, the aim of nutrigenetics
Otherwise, there will not be sick or unhealthy person. Moreover, the research is to determine how combinations of different SNPs may
results from many studies showed a lot of contradictions. Or even affect individual variations in response to diet, including metabolic
in one study, the same dietary component intervention could show responses to particular nutrients, specific nutritional requirements
the effect in one subject but there is no any effect with another one. and susceptibility to disease outcomes.
Contradictions in many studies have led researchers to The information from nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics research
investigate the answer for interindividual variations. Research in the shows that there are interactions among diet, environment and
field of nutrition has shifted its attention from traditional nutritional phenotypes. These information leads to the new approach of
study that find out what nutrient can maintain the health in big nutrition, which is Personalized Nutrition. Personalized Nutrition
population towards the nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics study. gains a lot of attention these days since the nutrition is designed to
Nutrigenomics is the study that aims to investigate the effect of match with individual variation. The overall goal of personalized
a diet or a dietary component on expression of gene, protein and nutrition is to prevent and manage chronic diseases by giving the
metabolites. nutritional approach or recommendation according to individual
Nutrigenetics is the study that aims to investigate the different information including genetics, metabolism, gut microbiota and
phenotypic responses (i.e., weight, blood pressure, plasma environment.
cholesterol, or glucose levels) to a specific diet (i.e., low fat or
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