What is Precision Nutrition?

You are what you eat, but who you are can also affect how your body uses what you eat. General recommendations, as we’ve been accustomed to, are made for populations of people, but the future of nutrition in medicine may look more like putting a puzzle together.

Research is showing that there can be significant differences in the way that compounds in food are processed by individuals. Nutrition is becoming personalized and that personalization is called precision nutrition.  

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded a $19.2 million grant to a group of researchers based at the NC Research Campus in Kannapolis. The award will fund a Metabolomics and Clinical Assays Center. This research will utilize clinical samples, metabolomics and bioinformatics to build a reference database that will help predict how an individual may react to specific plant compounds based on internal and external factors.

PHHI research faculty, Colin Kay, PhD, brings expertise in dietary phytochemical assays to the project. His lab provides analytical resources for establishing links between dietary exposure and states of health and wellness.

This article was part of the April 2022 e-news FRESH Rx. Subscribe for similar content delivered to your inbox monthly.