Personalised nutrition: Making it happen

Abstract

Personalised Nutrition allows individual variation in dietary, lifestyle, anthropometric, phenotypic and/or genomic information to be considered when giving dietary advice. Compared to ‘generic’ dietary health messages, personalised dietary advice has been shown more likely to result in healthy dietary change. Personalised regimes can help clients in this endeavour by putting them in control and taking into consideration individual propensity for behaviour change, motives for food choice as well as social and lifestyle factors impacting upon the eating context. Provision of personalised nutrition services across Europe should consider inter-country differences in perceived barriers to uptake of personalised nutrition including those associated with the process from the collecting of information and taking of biological samples through to how the results are interpreted and delivered. Irrespective of European country, potential consumers appear to trust health professionals such as dietitians over commercial agents to provide personalised nutrition. Dieticians, therefore, are likely to play a key role in making personalised nutrition happen in the future. Organisations representing nutrition and dietetics professionals will need to be consulted for guidance on how to address the ethical and legal issues around personalised nutrition and regulate practice. A future is envisaged where commercial personalised nutrition will work with existing health providers in bringing the benefits of personalised nutrition to the wider public.