Precision nutrition: Paving the path from potential to practice through systems science and ethical translation

Abstract

Governments worldwide have traditionally relied on population-level dietary guidance to enhance health outcomes. These broad strategies have substantially reduced deficiency-related disorders but now confront the far more complex challenge of chronic, diet-associated illnesses (Bailey and Stover, 2023). Precision nutrition (PN) seeks to bridge this gap by tailoring nutritional interventions based on individual or subgroup characteristics, including genetic, metabolic, microbial, and behavioral profiles (Zeisel, 2020). However, as this field evolves, it faces major scientific, ethical, and translational challenges that question how it can move from conceptual promise to equitable, evidence-based practice (Bailey and Stover, 2023). PN debunks the idea of “one-size-fits-all” and advocates for individualized approaches that depend on the biological differences among people (Singar et al., 2024). A pioneering work in PN is the Food4Me trial, which showed that personalized dietary advice leads to better adherence to healthy eating patterns, sustained dietary improvements, and higher Healthy Eating Index scores compared to generic guidance (Livingstone et al., 2016). Subsequent research has extended these insights, illustrating that dietary responsiveness can be stratified by genetic variants, metabolic signatures, and microbiome composition (Lagoumintzis and Patrinos, 2023).

Keywords: Nutrition, Genetic Variants, Metabolic Signatures