Nutrigenomics Diet Portland OR

To Eat According to Your Genes

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By Nancy Ross-Flanigan

Jonathan Luckett is a pretty healthy guy, and he’d like to stay that way. He tries his best to keep up with the latest nutrition news and to translate the findings into his everyday eating habits. But like a lot of health-conscious people, Luckett has discovered that’s not as simple as it sounds.

“I find myself very confused by all the literature that says it’s okay to eat this one day, and then finding out the next day that it’s really not,” says the 42-year-old information technology consultant from Accokeek, Maryland. Health problems like obesity and heart disease don’t run in Luckett’s family, so maybe it’s fine for him to supersize his fries or indulge in a sinful slice of cheesecake once in awhile. Then again, how can he be sure such guilty pleasures won’t raise his risk for some other ailment? “I’d just like to know what foods will really make a difference in my longevity and health and which ones I should stay away from,” he says.

Luckett soon may get just that sort of guidance. Through a pilot program offered by AlphaGenics of Gaithersburg, Maryland, a company that plans to provide dietary recommendations based on genetic tests, he and a group of other adventurous souls will offer up DNA samples in return for detailed dietary advice tailored to their specific health risks. It’s perhaps the first time people will be able to eat exactly what their body ordered—a pioneering plunge into the emerging field known as nutritional genomics, or nutrigenomics for short: the study of how our diet and genes interact.

Nutrigenomics research is one of the beneficiaries of the Human Genome Project, which is giving scientists ever-greater insights into the genetic underpinnings of many common diseases. Improved scientific techniques are helping them understand how the genes we’re born with can be influenced by diet and lifestyle. Though the field is still in its infancy, scientists are excited about the possibility of being able to tell you exactly which foods you should—and shouldn’t—eat to maintain good health. Respected researchers predict that before long, we’ll be using nutrigenomics to help control a wide range of health problems, from obesity and osteoporosis to cancer and heart disease. But insights from the field may also explain such perennial puzzles as why your skinny friend can chow down on cheeseburgers without sending her cholesterol into the stratosphere, while yours goes sky-high.

Nutrigenomics, in fact, seems a great solution to the perennial frustration faced by public health officials: Advice that’s sound for the population as a whole may not be relevant for any single individual. “There’s a famous expression in public health that says you have to stop eating fat so your neighbor doesn’t have a heart attack,” says Fergus M. Clydesdale, head of the food science department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. “We can finally start making recommendations that are more individualized.” For examp...

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