Nutrition Research Targets Disease

Food plays an essential role in human health, but can it be used to prevent or even treat disease? Food scientists and nutrition researchers think so and their stories are part of the latest interview series on Nutrition Innovation from FutureFood 2050—a multi-year program from IFT highlighting new ways of thinking and tools to sustainably feeding 9 billion plus people by 2050.

In the future, nutrition advice could be customized based on your specific genetic makeup and lifecycle—what Tufts University nutrition science professor Jeffrey Blumberg calls precision nutrition. Blumberg visualizes a future where a cheek swab and rapid DNA analysis is a standard part of your annual checkup, so that dietary guidance can be tailored specifically to what’s ailing you: heart disease, osteoporosis, cancer and more.

“I’ll be able to tell you what kinds of fruits, what kinds of vegetables and what kinds of whole grains that you should be choosing, or exactly how often,” says Blumberg, who also directs the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts. “Or how about if I give you your own personalized K-Cup, so when you make your coffee in the morning, you’re getting it with the key ingredients you need? Or we can just have your 3-D printer in the kitchen print out a cookie or piece of chocolate that will contain that.”

It’s all about finding optimal amounts and appropriate ratios of nutrient components—vitamins, minerals, proteins, fatty acids, carbohydrates, bioactives like carotenoids and flavonoids—and it’s hugely complex, says Blumberg.

“Food and nutrition science have now recognized where they play in what we call ‘systems biology,’” he says. “That is how the integration of all these factors about food consumption, digestion, distribution, metabolism activity are affected by you as an individual, and are also affected by the environment that you live in, whether it’s more or less polluted. Whether you’re exposed to more or less sunshine. Whether you’re more physically active or not, and what kinds of physical activity [you do].”

But even in the complicated world of nutrition research, says Blumberg, what isn’t complex is that people are still going to want to eat things that taste good and are convenient and affordable. And that’s where he suggests the food industry needs to step in with more products that are both nutritious and processed to be appealing to consumers.

“I’m talking about …alternate food sources like insects and seaweeds,” says Blumberg. “Like looking at genetic engineering of plants, and manufacturing foods that are going to have profiles that are going to better fit what we consider to be healthy.”

“Plants contain so many bioactive molecules, they are almost a library of chemicals that one can eat,” says Mark Heiman, a neuroendocrinologist who is vice-president and chief scientific officer of Colorado-based MicroBiome Therapeutics. That’s why his biotechnology company, along with about 10 others in the field, is developing a new class of nutritional therapies—plant-based dietary supplements that act like medical foods. The company’s not-yet-named therapeutic, NM504, can alter microbial populations in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This therapy is designed to treat illnesses such as diabetes and obesity by interacting in specific ways with the human GI microbiome, which consists of 100 trillion microorganisms—three times the number of cells in the human body.

Heiman believes that Western diets lacking variety affect the body’s metabolic system. And there is new evidence that an imbalance in the microbial system can lead to Type 2 diabetes. One day, that could mean your annual medical exam would include fecal testing to determine whether your GI tract needs a greater mix of microbial activity to stay healthy. In addition to diet and exercise, for instance, a doctor could advise you to increase the varieties of foods you eat and prescribe a therapeutic supplement based on the chemical factors in your digestive system.

“The newest frontier that I foresee will be the discovery of interactions between the bacteria in our guts and our own physiology,” Heiman says. “The bacteria harvest their nutrients in their ecosystem—the microbiome—for their survival. The nutrients are remnants from the digestive process. Bacteria produce new molecules from their digestion of the remnants, and those molecules may interact with our physiology, like a conversation between the bacteria and our physiology.”

For example, when we eat certain types of foods, the particular bacteria that enjoy those remnants of digestion then produce molecules that communicate with the brain that we are full and there is no longer a need to eat, Heiman explains. But the conversation ends when those bacteria are not fed. “Then the satiety signal is missing and we are not only hungry, but hungry for a particular food, such as carbohydrates,” he says.

Although targeted microbial therapies to treat disease may be a year or two away, everyone can benefit their gut today by eating a greater diversity of plant food, says Heiman.

To read these and other stories in the Nutrition Innovation series, please visit www.futurefood2050.com.