If you’ve ever wondered what the future of food will look like, watch the Fooduristic’23 audition to understand that it’s already here. Developed by the KM NERO Food Innovation Hub, it shows the main food trends. “Triple impact solutions, in an economic, environmental and social sense”, explained Beatriz Jacoste, director of the KM NERO Food Innovation Hub, in her presentation. Packaging created with biomaterials or the massive incorporation of proteins into the vegetable diet were some of the most outstanding. Children’s accuracy is a great compliment to these new things.
Doctor in Biology Daniel Ramón, research professor at the CSIC and professor at the University of Valencia, declares that “there is precision nutrition in the development of a diet that adapts as much as possible to the characteristics of consumers”. It is more important to understand the concept of nutrition and use it, even as a medicine itself.
That is personal nutrition
As Ramón, Number Academic of the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain, indicates that those consumer characteristics that this nutritional personality could have “are multiple and include sociological and cultural issues, for example, their culinary preferences or due limitations. to ethics. But also those inherent in the physiology of consuming , such as age, genome or microbiome [microorganismos]”.
This can lead to progress in the well-being of people, although, as Dr. Ramon explains, it is still in its infancy: “I don’t think that personal nutrition can be increased in individual steps. The crowd will be divided into groups and recommendations will be specific to each of them. However, remember, this trend in food, so useful and convenient for our good health, is preserved “in some areas of the planet and segments of the population, where consumers have a great power to acquire”.
The doctor points out that the main reason behind the interest of these consumers in precision nutrition “is that they understand that a good diet, with a healthy lifestyle, will ensure a better future without serious health problems. The media and social media, aware of this fact, have amplified the message”. All this has come from the progress of science.
Omics and its role in precision nutrition
The so-called omics sciences play a decisive role in developments in nutritional therapy. Genomics, epigenomics, metabolomics, proteomics and transcriptomics … preside over the study of molecular organisms. “There are laboratory tools that began to be developed a few years ago and have completely changed the understanding of the biological processes of our body.” Also about livestock and plants, according to our diet”, explains Daniel Ramon.
All this provides a new, much more detailed knowledge of the agri-food chain. “They helped us understand that we are not alone. Trillions of bacteria live inside our body”, explains the biologist, who provides a clear example to understand: the microbiome, crucial for our health.
For this reason, he believes that “a science” should be obliged to the greatest wealth of molecular knowledge that has been generated during the twenty years with omics technology. To develop these diets more in specific groups.
Children precision, key for the microbiota
To explain, the expert gives us a clear example. “If you weigh 70 kilos, two of these are not yours, but the bacteria that inhabit your body. In a few words, Ramón interprets your digestive tract. “We call this the microbiome and we have discovered that its role in our health is fundamental: they extract energy from what we eat, synthesize the compounds that we absorb, converting them into compounds with positive action for our health, and expel our own. protection of the internal organs of the body.”
In recent research it has been shown that “in many diseases there is a certain relationship between the appearance of pathology and changes in this microbial group. And, most interesting for the reason that concerns us today, its composition can vary according to our age and diet. Hence, asking the doctor an interesting question : Is it possible to change the composition of this microbiome for the better with precision nutrition? “The answer is yes, and this is one example,” he said.
Benefits of personal diet
Precision nutrition could mean a revolution in the way we treat food. “Especially because it can help us with health problems,” recalls Daniel Ramon, who highlights how the digestive microbiome can benefit. Something essential, especially for people over 60 years old. From that age we lose select bacterial groups from our digestive microbiome, bacteria with a strong anti-inflammatory effect. As a result, it appears inflammation of the intestines, which can be the origin of many problems”, explains the researcher.
However, this can be easily prevented with the care of nutrition: “it would be enough to add some of these bacteria to our diet in the form of probiotics or fibers that promote their growth, which we call prebiotics, to solve the problem and take care of healthy aging”. .
For this reason, the doctor in biology elaborates “this is being investigated in many public and private laboratories. It is an obvious example of precision nutrition for a certain group, in this case, the elderly”. In an aging Western world, it is clear that precision nutrition is going to be a useful tool.
