Nutrigenetics

In the past decades, extensive usage of omic technologies applied to nutrition has led to the concept of personalised dietary recommendations. It is now widely accepted that gene–diet interaction is a complex, bidirectional mechanism: food components can modulate the flow of genetic information by regulating genes at transcriptional, translational and post-translational levels, whereas the individual's genotype determines specific responses to nutrient intake. Genetic variants (that represent the focus of nutrigenetic studies) influence the metabolism of almost all macro- and micronutrients, thus differentially impacting on human health. Although still a young field of research, nutrigenetics appears to be a promising tool for monitoring susceptibility to chronic pathologies, as well as for designing personalised nutrition in order to prevent (or eventually treat) the most common Western diet-associated diseases.