The time of general guidelines and dietary regimes valid for everyone and everyone will not (perhaps) be over, but there are those who bet that in the future the world of nutrition will radically change its approach: the trend is already today towards a diet studied on fit for each individual, with their medical history, health conditions and parameters.
Obesity, the WHO alarm: almost two out of three people affected in Europe (including children)
by Valentina Arcovio
03 Maggio 2022
It is the idea of an increasingly consistent part of the scientific community that studies the sciences of nutrition, according to which – thanks to advances in technology and research – in the space of a few years, nutrition will become personalized and “automated”, with use of applications for mobile phones and tablets, wrist-bands and other sensors that will measure our health conditions directly.
Pioneers of this school of thought are the researchers of the University of Reading, who have just concluded one of the first and most serious clinical trials with which they tested the effectiveness of a diet studied on the table from an app and compared its performance. with one that merely adheres to international guidelines.
The app of British researchers
The application, developed at the University of Reading Department of Human Nutrition and Biomedical Engineering, has proven extremely effective in guiding patients with eating disorders or related diseases. “Our app (called eNutri nda) has proven effective in increasing the intake of healthy food in patients – he explains Rosalind Fallaizenutrition biologist and one of the authors of the work – greatly improving the quality of the diet for the group of patients who had access to personalized and automated nutritional advice with algorithms “.
The analysis was carried out on about 200 individuals divided equally between those who followed the specific advice developed and a control group that instead put into practice the generic guidelines for nutrition suggested by the international health authorities and the United Kingdom. At the end of the twelve-week follow-up, the personalized diet group recorded better performance compared to the control group, with better dietary qualities as measured by the mAHEI value. The mAHEI (Modified Alternative Healthy Eating Index) is one of the most used international standards to “classify” the benefits of a diet: it assigns a score to foods and macronutrients by which to estimate their potential to create chronic diseases in healthy individuals. To give an idea, whoever does not eat vegetables in any daily meal scores 0 points, whoever includes five or more courses scores 10 points. On the other hand, those who drink sugary drinks score 0 points, those who don’t drink them score 10.
“Let me be clear – precise Fallaize – the ideal continues to be to consult a dietician or a biologist and nutritionist licensed to the profession. “It is also true, however, that not everyone has the resources to get advice from a professional, despite the need for it because they suffer from disorders of the Nutrition or related diseases. In recent years, in fact, we are witnessing a real nutritional transition in which unhealthy eating habits and lifestyles are creating an army of patients suffering from diseases in various ways related to food. to type 2 diabetes, from cardiovascular to inflammatory disorders of the gastrointestinal tract; they are some of the most common chronic non-communicable diseases and make two-thirds of the global victims each year, many of which could very likely be avoided by changing styles of life, doing physical activity, reducing the use of alcohol and tobacco and, indeed, adopting a healthy diet.
A positive relationship with food
“The nutritional advice – continues the expert – should focus on a balanced diet and above all on a positive relationship with food. And I am happy that our app offers this service for everyone at low cost”. Many apps developed in recent years focus purely on weight loss and calorie counting, rather than healthy eating. Researchers claim that e-Nutri, on the other hand, is able to “tailor” a personalized diet for individual use, using a special score of the various nutrients. The algorithm developed by researchers at the University of Reading assigns higher scores to those who regularly eat the recommended amounts of healthier foods such as fruit, legumes and vegetables, as well as less healthy ones such as red meat or processed snacks. “We are continuing to develop the application to fully adapt it to specific population groups, including those suffering from cardiovascular disease or diabetes,” reads the publication’s conclusions.
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by Cinzia Lucchelli
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The innovative approach of the University of Reading is not isolated: pilot studies are underway in the USA and the European Union is in pole position with the Stance4Health project, funded under Horizon 2020, which involves partners from eight European countries , including Germany, Spain and Italy. Mobile technology and mathematical algorithms that predict the behavior of the intestinal microbiota in response to the intake of specific nutrients, taking into account consumer needs and interfacing with wearable electronic devices and then recommending foods or supplements, depending on the different levels of physical activity or duration of sleep. Will this be the future of personalized nutrition?