Metabolic Phenotyping of Diet and Dietary Intake

Abstract

Nutrition provides the building blocks for growth, repair and maintenance of the body and is key to maintaining health. Exposure to fast foods, mass production of dietary components and wider importation of goods has challenged the balance between diet and health in recent decades and both scientists and clinicians struggle to characterise the relationship between this changing dietary landscape and human metabolism with its consequent impact on health.Metabolic phenotyping of foods, using high density data-generating technologies to profile the biochemical composition of foods, meals and human samples (pre and post food intake) can be used to map the complex interaction between the diet and human metabolism and also to assess food quality and safety. Here we outline some of the techniques currently used for metabolic phenotyping and describe key applications in the food sciences, ending with a broad outlook at some of the newer technologies in the field with a view to exploring their potential to address some of the critical challenges in nutritional science.

Benefits of pulse consumption on metabolism and health: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials

“…Most studies aimed to access changes in selected metabolic biomarkers, performing essentially targeted analyses. In this sense, metabolic profiling could emerge as a powerful tool to help gain mechanistic insight into nutrition research (Brignardello, Holmes, and Garcia-Perez 2017; S eb edio 2017) and in particular, regarding pulse consumption. In fact, by exploiting thousands of measured metabolites in easily accessed biofluid samples (e.g.…”

“…blood, urine, and feces), reflecting together physiological status, food intake, gut microbiota metabolism and environmental exposure (Brignardello, Holmes, and Garcia-Perez 2017; S eb edio 2017), metabolomics approaches, such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, may successfully demonstrate variable metabolites profiles in response to different dietary interventions, including plantbased versus omnivorous diets (Wu et al 2016;Bertram et al 2007;Jakobsen et al 2017;Hecke et al 2016;Zheng et al 2015). Another significant advantage of the use of metabolomics methods is the capacity to perform both targeted and untargeted biochemical assessments, which allows researchers to gain a broader view of metabolic responses to food intake, taking into consideration eventual interpersonal variability as well (Brignardello, Holmes, and Garcia-Perez 2017; S eb edio 2017). Moreover, these extensive analytic approaches would not only help overcome one crucial limitation of most food trials, which is the self-report nature of food intake data, but also, optimize diet compliance assessment (Madrid-Gambin et al 2017;Guasch-Ferr e, Bhupathiraju, and Hu 2018;Hanhineva 2015;Perera et al 2015).…”

Analytical considerations for (un)‐targeted metabolomic studies with special focus on forensic applications

“…3,7 It not only involves the identification of endogenous substances in biological samples, but also the determination of changes between different conditions. [9][10][11][12] In the forensic (toxicological) field, metabolomics is a rather new topic with little data on humans available. [9][10][11][12] In the forensic (toxicological) field, metabolomics is a rather new topic with little data on humans available.…”

“…Studies were reported in different fields such as pharmacology, clinical trials, nutrition, and toxicology. [9][10][11][12] In the forensic (toxicological) field, metabolomics is a rather new topic with little data on humans available.…”

Phenotyping women based on dietary macronutrients, physical activity and body weight using machine-learning tools

“…Nutritional phenotyping, a way to classify individuals based on their nutritional and health status, is a primary way to personalize nutrition recommendations [1]. Several approaches to phenotyping using metabolomics, nutrigenomics, metabonomics, epigenomics, and bioinformatics have come into existence [2]. However, there is yet to be a consensus as to how to bridge these phenotyping tools to personalize nutrition.…”