Abstract
Demonstrating in an unambiguous manner that a diet, let alone a single product, ‘optimizes’ health, presents an enormous challenge. The least complicated is when the starting situation is clearly suboptimal, like with nutritional deficiencies, malnutrition, unfavourable lifestyle, or due to disease or ageing. Here, desired improvements and intervention strategies may to some extent be clear. However, even then situations require approaches that take into account interactions between nutrients and other factors, complex dose-effect relationships etc. More challenging is to substantiate that a diet or a specific product optimizes health in the general population, which comes down to achieve perceived, ‘non-medical’ or future health benefits in predominantly healthy persons. Presumed underlying mechanisms involve effects of non-nutritional components with subtle and slowly occurring physiological effects that may be difficult to translate into measurable outcomes. Most promising strategies combine classical physiological concepts with those of ‘multi-omics’ and systems biology. Resilience-the ability to maintain or regain homeostasis in response to stressors-is often used as proxy for a particular health domain. Next to this, quantifying health requires personalized strategies, measurements preferably carried out remotely, real-time and in a normal living environment, and experimental designs other than randomized controlled trials (RCTs), for example N-of-1 trials.
Highlights
In addition to being tasty, nutritious and safe, the principal requirement for our diet is that it should provide essential nutrients that enable optimal development and functioning in daily life
As Canguilhem noted, ‘health’ should neither be considered a state of ‘normality’, nor a ‘permanent’ state [1]. The latter certainly applies to the relationship between nutrition and health when we consider the importance of nutrition for normal development, resistance to diseases, recovery and healthy ageing
The response to a stressor can provide information about the health status of a person. This principle is well-known from clinical practice, where for example an ECG and other physiological parameters are recorded during and after an exercise challenge, or blood glucose measured during an oral glucose tolerance test
Summary
In addition to being tasty, nutritious and safe, the principal requirement for our diet is that it should provide essential nutrients that enable optimal development and functioning in daily life. In view of the complexity of nutritional biology and the extent to which we currently understand cause effect-relationships, concepts based on ‘the ability to adapt’ or resilience are offering practical strategies to move forward in this context, allowing experimental physiological- and psychological approaches to measure health and health optimisation. Such concepts are getting increasingly mechanistic support from fundamental biology.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
