A genetically based diet

Is it possible to deduce an ideal diet based on DNA?

Ilya Khel, Hi-News

In some countries, dieting is a multimillion–dollar industry, in monetary terms. Over the past few years, many diets have been invented dedicated to increasing protein, reducing fat and lowering calories in food. Athletes pay special attention to the diet. At the same time, it is known that people tend to keep themselves in shape and do nothing. But it doesn't work that way. A new California company is working to eliminate the root cause of why our diet doesn't work: no diet takes into account the unique genetic code of the owner. The "personalized nutrition" program from Habit aims to analyze human DNA and create an individual nutrition plan and deliver ingredients to your home. The company officially started working just a few days ago, and will start providing its services in early 2017.

The main task of any dietary plan that is dedicated to weight loss is to reduce the amount of calories consumed by a person. But more and more studies show that the reason for the failure of the diet most often lies in the fact that the same food can affect different people in completely different ways - the same dish can give more calories to one and less to others, and jumps in sugar levels vary from person to person. For these reasons, it is difficult to make a diet that will work for everyone. And that's why many scientists are turning to the idea of personalized nutrition, or nutrigenomics: to analyze DNA to find out which food makes us healthier.

"We have always been rowing everyone under the same comb, making up a diet, and most dieters have tried and failed," says Alan Green, pediatrician and consultant physician at Habit. He says that first we need to understand the complexity of our biology, and then determine a plan that will lead to success in an industry in which everyone usually fails.

Habit plans to use genetic markers to identify your ideal food and send that food directly to your home. Of course, at first it will be in the USA, but someday, perhaps, it will appear in our country. Clients receive a blood collection kit. By pricking their finger on their own, they send blood samples to the laboratory, where microbiologists identify a number of biomarkers, look for genetic variations in DNA that affect the digestion and assimilation of food.

Customers also receive a drink called "metabolic challenge". It represents a typical American diet: a cocktail of fats, sugars and carbohydrates that "defy the system." After drinking the drink, users donate blood again to find out how well their bodies withstand the effects of fats and sugar. Finally, clients provide a number of body metrics: height, weight, waist circumference, report on their lifestyle, tell how often they run or exercise. All this leads to the creation of a personalized nutrition plan suitable for everyone separately.

When Habit releases the first home testing kits in January, it will be the first full-fledged program of nutrition preparation from the laboratory to the client. She will evaluate not calories, type of food or its quantity, but a personal genetic response to food, supply customers with food delivery, further tests and nutritionists. Some may be lucky and their bodies, for example, will be the best at absorbing carbohydrates; others will be advised to focus on protein, sacrificing carbohydrates and fats. Third, it may be recommended to absorb food more than average due to accelerated metabolism. Biomarkers can tell you about other, more personalized things, like how you absorb caffeine.

Video from the press release of Cell Press 'Healthy' foods differ by individual – VM

Science kind of supports this idea. In a 2015 study in the journal Cell (Zeevi et al., Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Responses – VM), scientists gave 800 people the same food and then measured their glucose levels. It turned out that, despite the identity of the food, the level of glucose in the blood increased unequally. This applied not only to sugar-rich foods like ice cream, but also to foods with a low glycemic index, like whole-grain bread. The study also showed that a personal plan based on genetics helps to reduce the level of afternoon glucose in general.

Drawing from an article in Cell – VM

Other studies have shown similar results, and currently a lot of attention is being paid to the idea of personalized nutrition. Nevertheless, it is very expensive to conduct such tests, and Neil Grimmer, the director of Habit, would like to change this. Personally, expensive DNA testing and food selection helped him lose more than 10 kilograms and return his body back to the triathlon. His goal was to make this kind of service accessible to everyone. Currently, Habit charges $299 for initial testing, diet recommendations, and a session of conversations with a nutritionist. Food and subsequent testing are not included in the initial cost.

Nevertheless, Habit has just started work and is similarly trying to uncover all the factors that affect how we digest and assimilate food. Therefore, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics does not recommend using nutrigenetic testing as a basis for making a diet. Elementary, they have not passed enough research and have not proven their effectiveness. While.

Studies also show that the gut microbiome can have a significant impact on how we break down food, as well as on the nutrients and calories we extract from it. Further, depending on what a person eats, the intestinal microbiome may change, which means that the food suitable for a person will also change. Habit does not take into account and does not analyze the microbiome. However, he admits that in the future he will include these studies in the process of his work.

Currently, research on personalized nutrition and nutrigenomics alone makes the idea of Habit promising. It is unknown, however, whether customers will enjoy the food that their own genome will offer them. But Green notes that the idea of using food and diet as a treatment has long been neglected by Western medicine, and it's time to change that. Perhaps Habit, with its caring approach, will be able to fulfill the Hippocratic covenant: "Let food be your medicine, and medicine will be your food."

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  31.10.2016