Combining traditional dietary assessment methods with novel metabolomics techniques: present efforts by the Food Biomarker Alliance

Abstract

FFQ, food diaries and 24 h recall methods represent the most commonly used dietary assessment tools in human studies on nutrition and health, but food intake biomarkers are assumed to provide a more objective reflection of intake. Unfortunately, very few of these biomarkers are sufficiently validated. This review provides an overview of food intake biomarker research and highlights present research efforts of the Joint Programming Initiative 'A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life' (JPI-HDHL) Food Biomarkers Alliance (FoodBAll). In order to identify novel food intake biomarkers, the focus is on new food metabolomics techniques that allow the quantification of up to thousands of metabolites simultaneously, which may be applied in intervention and observational studies. As biomarkers are often influenced by various other factors than the food under investigation, FoodBAll developed a food intake biomarker quality and validity score aiming to assist the systematic evaluation of novel biomarkers. Moreover, to evaluate the applicability of nutritional biomarkers, studies are presently also focusing on associations between food intake biomarkers and diet-related disease risk. In order to be successful in these metabolomics studies, knowledge about available electronic metabolomics resources is necessary and further developments of these resources are essential. Ultimately, present efforts in this research area aim to advance quality control of traditional dietary assessment methods, advance compliance evaluation in nutritional intervention studies, and increase the significance of observational studies by investigating associations between nutrition and health.

Nutrimetabolomics: An Integrative Action for Metabolomic Analyses in Human Nutritional Studies

“…Independent validation remains the only honest way to evaluate general validity of observed findings. This should be increasingly taken into consideration in the study design phase and networks for nutritional metabolomics, such as the FoodBAll consortium, could help overcome present shortcomings in the validation procedure by providing access to study material for external validation.…”

“…With a rapidly growing number of excellent studies that identify food‐specific metabolite markers, there is the perspective that food metabolomics will transform the sciences relying on food consumption data. The FoodBall consortium will certainly have its share here …”

“…In that context, the international metabolomics community has made efforts to determine standard procedures, to evaluate the analytical performance of untargeted metabolomics, and to identify the needs for infrastructure, including data sharing . The Food Biomarker Alliance (FoodBAll), which includes the authors of this article, participates in this effort by fostering the application of novel metabolomic techniques for human nutrition studies as complement to traditional dietary assessment methods such as food frequency questionnaire and 24‐h recall …”

Appearance of Di‐ and Tripeptides in Human Plasma after a Protein Meal Does Not Correlate with PEPT1 Substrate Selectivity

“…Randomization and allocation of volunteers into the study was done with SNOSE (sequentially numbered, opaque, sealed envelopes). The principle study design can be found elsewhere . Volunteers were randomly assigned either to receive rice alone (125 g, cooked, 30 g margarine, 1.5 g salt) as control, or rice with 100 g chicken breast (dose 1; prepared sous vide) or with 200 g chicken breast (dose 2).…”

Metabotypes Related to Meat and Vegetable Intake Reflect Microbial, Lipid and Amino Acid Metabolism in Healthy People

“…Metabolic phenotyping (‘`metabotyping'’) is now a well‐established approach to define population subgroups based on the monitoring of a wide range of biochemical compounds using minimally invasive urine or blood samples . Metabotypes reflect systemic influences on molecular regulatory processes, including dietary factors, and diet‐host‐microbial metabolic interactions . There is increasing evidence that gut microbiota influence whether dietary patterns have negative or positive health outcomes, some of the effects being mediated by metabolites derived from the host–microbial metabolism of dietary components …”