Abstract
Whole diets and dietary patterns are increasingly highlighted in modern nutrition and health research instead of single food items or nutrients alone. The Healthy Nordic Diet is a dietary pattern typically associated with beneficial health outcomes in observational studies, but results from randomized controlled trials are mixed. Dietary assessment is one of the greatest challenges in observational studies and compliance is a major challenge in dietary interventions. During the last decade, research has shown the great importance of the gut microbiota in health and disease. Studies have have both shown that the Nordic diet affects the gut microbiota and that the gut microbiota predicts the effects of such a diet. Rapid technique developments in the area of high-throughput mass spectrometry have enabled the large-scale use of metabolomics both as an objective measurement of dietary intake as well as in providing the final readout of the endogenous metabolic processes and the impact of the gut microbiota. In this review, we give an update on the current status on biomarkers that reflect a Healthy Nordic Diet or individual components thereof (food intake biomarkers), biomarkers that show the effects of a Healthy Nordic Diet and biomarkers reflecting the role of a Healthy Nordic Diet on the gut microbiota as well as how the gut microbiota or derived molecules may be used to predict the effects of a Healthy Nordic Diet on different outcomes.
Highlights
Diet is one of the most important modifiable lifestyle factors contributing to the prevention of non-communicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer and their main risk factors [1]
Many studies have suggested that better adherence to healthy dietary patterns, such as the Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS), Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) score, and Healthy Eating Index (HEI), significantly reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) [5,6,7]
A Healthy Nordic Diet contains a combination of food items such as whole grains, root vegetables, fish and berries contributing to beneficial health effects as evidenced from observational studies and to some degree from clinical studies
Summary
Diet is one of the most important modifiable lifestyle factors contributing to the prevention of non-communicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer and their main risk factors [1]. The use of specific dietary biomarkers that reflect the Healthy Nordic Diet pattern overall, as well as individual food items included in this diet, could be useful objective instruments to improve the analysis Such markers can be used to address compliance in dietary intervention studies. Recent research has shown that those intrinsic and external factors contribute as determinants of the response/non-response to a Healthy Nordic Diet, or individual foods included in such diet, on several outcomes such as blood glucose levels [29,30], body weight [31,32] and blood lipids [33,34] The aim of this narrative review is to highlight the most recent findings and provide the current state of the art of biomarkers that reflect a Healthy Nordic Diet and to provide an overview of the recent developments in personalized nutrition with focus on the search for biomarkers that define responders and non-responders to a Healthy Nordic Diet or food components thereof. We suggest future steps to be taken to develop our understanding of the health effects of the Healthy Nordic Diet and its use in personalized nutrition
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