Towards personalised nutrition

Research is under way to develop an “experimental kitchen” in which devices will link personal nutrition and home refrigerators with supermarket shelves to help people improve their diet.

According to Mike Gibney (director, Institute of Food and Health, University College Dublin), speaking at a food science meeting in Dublin in November 2010, these devices will be able to evaluate what comes out of your fridge and give you recipe options.

However, the future of personalised nutrition was more likely to lie with “clusters of individuals” with similar genetic make-up rather than individuals since manufacturers could find it uneconomic to produce foods formulated for one person alone.

Although individual DNA sequence variations, known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), might allow researchers to understand diet and gene interactions with metabolism, given the large numbers of SNPs, definitive dietary advice based on single SNPs was not possible. But Professor Gibney said that it might be possible for such data to be related to the information technology services offered by supermarkets.

A second rapidly emerging area, he added, was the provision of personalised data based on phenotypes. These data could be used to advise individuals on their personal nutritional status and ultimately their food choice.

People could wear electronic biofeedback devices that would measure factors such as blood pressure and allow them to adapt their lifestyles, exercise and dietary intakes as required to maintain their health.