Personalized nutrition and omics technologies

Different individuals respond differently to dietary interventions due to the specific effects that certain food-derived nutrients can have on the biological process. This fact means that the standard dietary recommendations, usually delivered to motivate people toward healthy choices, may have a limited impact on the prevention of diseases in susceptible subjects. Personalization should thus take into account internal (genetics, microbiome, metabolome interactions) and external (diet and physical activity) factors, keeping in mind that personal, psychological, and social factors are critical to keeping people motivated and engaged. Reductionist approaches might not be suitable to address the study of the complex interplay between food and biological systems. In this context, high-throughput omics approaches such as genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have emerged as optimal tools to study the interindividual response to diet and for the possibility to be integrated into a systems biology perspective. This review describes how omics technologies can influence the field of personalized nutrition and the challenges that still lay ahead.