Personalized Nutrition: Making It Happen

Abstract

Personalized nutrition allows individual variation in dietary, lifestyle, anthropometric, phenotypic, and/or genomic information to be considered when giving dietary advice. Compared to “generic” dietary health messages, personalized dietary advice has been shown more likely to result in healthy dietary change. Personalized regimes can help clients in this endeavor by putting them in control and taking into consideration the individual’s propensity for behavior change, motives for food choice, as well as social and lifestyle factors impacting upon the eating context. Provision of personalized nutrition services across Europe should consider intercountry differences in perceived barriers to the uptake of personalized nutrition including those associated with the process from the collecting of information and taking of biological samples through to how the results are interpreted and delivered. Irrespective of European country, potential consumers appear to trust health professionals such as dietitians over commercial agents to provide personalized nutrition. Dieticians therefore are likely to play a key role in making personalized nutrition happen in the future. Organizations representing nutrition and dietetics professionals will need to be consulted for guidance on how to address the ethical and legal issues around personalized nutrition and regulate practice. A future is envisaged where commercial personalized nutrition will work with existing health providers in bringing the benefits of personalized nutrition to the wider public.