Chapter 17 - Precision Nutrition and Obesity

Abstract

Precision Nutrition, by integrating information from studies of anthropometry, genetics, epigenetics, metabolomics, and the microbiome, may lead to improved personalized recommendations for the prevention and management of overweight and obesity. Obesity results from the interaction of heritable physiology and modifiable lifestyle risk factors. The lifestyle factors which have become more common over the last 50 years leading to an increased prevalence of obesity in both industrialized and developing countries include rural-to-urban migration, dietary factors, sedentary lifestyles, poor sleep, and socioeconomic and demographic factors. Heritable factors predisposing to obesity may also influence individual behavioral responses to the obesogenic environment by affecting appetite, dietary patterns, individual preferences for macronutrients, and energy balance. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have found numerous associations of obesity with genetic polymorphisms. However, interactions between genetic variants and environmental risk factors which are prominent in obesity, complicate the calculation of risk based on individual genetic variants. Genetic risk scores formulated from combinations of genetic variants have been used in studies of the interaction of dietary factors and genetic background with some success. However, advances in nutrition science, including the discovery of the role of the microbiome in obesity, have led to the realization that not only genetics, but epigenetics, metabolomics, and the gut microbiome can impact overweight and obesity, resulting in many intermediate phenotypes which can be differentiated with anthropometric and body composition studies. These complex factors lead to the conclusion that Precision Nutrition may hold promise for improved prevention and treatment of obesity.