‘DNA diet’ discovery paves the way for ‘personalized’ weight loss menu

nutrition

To SWNS

Jul 23, 2023 | 4:16 PM

Scientists say the discovery of hundreds of genes that directly affect what we eat will pave the way for personalized and healthy eating plans.

They believe that new insights into the genetic basis of food preferences may help improve nutrition on an individual basis.

In one of the first large-scale studies of diet-related genes, researchers found about 500 genes that appear to directly influence the foods we eat.

They say their findings represent an important step in harnessing human genetics to develop precise nutritional strategies that can help improve health and prevent disease.

Research Team Leader Dr. Joanne Cole told the Southwest News Service“Some of the genes we identified are associated with sensory pathways such as taste, smell and texture, and may also enhance reward responses in the brain.

“Some of these genes may have distinct pathways that influence whether someone likes a food or not, so we may be able to use them to create a sensory genetic profile to fine-tune a person’s dietary recommendations based on what they like to eat.”

Using the UK Biobank, which contains data from 500,000 people, a team of American researchers conducted the Phenom-Wide Association Study (PheWAS) to identify genes that are more strongly associated with diet than with health and lifestyle factors.

PheWAS studies are used to find associations between targeted genetic variants and various human traits and behaviors, including dietary intake.

“The foods we choose to eat are greatly influenced by environmental factors such as culture, socioeconomic status, and food availability,” said Cole, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

“The role of genetics in influencing dietary intake is much smaller than all environmental factors, so hundreds of thousands of individuals must be studied to detect genetic influences among environmental factors.

“The data needed to do this weren’t available until recently.”

She explained that one of the challenges in identifying diet-related genes is that what people eat correlates with health factors such as high cholesterol and weight, as well as many other factors, including socioeconomic status.

In the new study, the researchers applied computational methods to “uncover” the direct effects of genetic mutations that affect diet, and separate them from indirect effects, such as how genes affect diabetes and which diabetes requires people to eat less sugar.

The UK Biobank contains not only detailed genetic information, but also detailed health and socioeconomic data, allowing researchers to test individual genetic variants for association with thousands of traits and eliminate indirect genetic variants that are more strongly associated with other factors such as diabetes.

Analysis revealed about 300 genes directly associated with specific food intake and just under 200 associated with dietary patterns grouping different foods, such as overall fish intake and fruit intake.

“This study showed that dietary patterns tended to have more indirect genetic influences, which means that dietary patterns are correlated with many other factors,” Cole said.

“This shows how important it is not to study dietary patterns in isolation, because their impact on human health can be completely mediated or confounded by other factors.”

She is studying newly identified diet-related genes to better understand their function, while also working to identify more genes that directly influence food preferences.

Cole is also interested in researching whether human genetics can be used to adapt the flavor profile of diets for weight loss to improve medication adherence.

She believes it may also be possible to use the new insights to tailor food to a person’s genetic predisposition.

“If we know that the gene encoding the nasal olfactory receptor enhances our preference for fruit and enhances our brain’s reward response, we may be able to use molecular studies of this receptor to identify natural or synthetic compounds that bind to it,” Cole added.

“Then adding one of these compounds to a healthy food could see if that food makes it more appealing to that person.”

She presented the findings at Nutrition 2023, the annual flagship meeting of the American Academy of Nutrition in Boston, Massachusetts.

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