Your nutritionist-dietician provides dietary advice according to the most current guidelines in conjunction with factors such as your age, stage of life (pregnant, lactating, etc.), whether you’re male or female, weight and height, health status, lifestlye, likes and dislikes, and your activity level. There is however, a newer approach called personalised nutrition, that considers information on individual characteristics to develop targeted nutritional advice. People respond to food in different ways and measures. Personalised nutrition, just as all nutrition advice does not just pertain to weight loss goals, but also helping patients achieve their own ambitions concerning their health and improve their lifestyle.
In its more “hardcore” form, personalised nutrition is also called precision nutrition, and requires more data about the individual, and allows the possibility to create a diet that is specifically tailored to your genetic makeup.
Our unique genetic makeup means that the way in which we metabolise nutrients, the interactions of enzymes and the biochemical reactions that occur in our bodies differ from person to person and therefore so do our responses to what we eat.
Genetic testing companies can profile an individual’s DNA and provide a report based on their genome as it applies to their nutrition and lifestyle. The information provided can be about how an individual processes and stores fat, their ability to breakdown cholesterol, their caffeine sensitivity and food intolerances as well as their risk of certain chronic diseases such as obesity and cardiovascular diseases.
You can learn even more by watching this video: https://youtu.be/94xZmEV4Wi4.
Maira Stefanakou, Dietician - Nutritionist
PSYCHOLOGY - TODAY