Genética y nutrigenética
2015; Cajamar; Issue: 27 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1698-3726
Autores Tópico(s)Nutrition, Genetics, and Disease
ResumoNutrigenomics and nutrigenetics are new areas of nutritional research, using revolutionary technology, developed during the last two decades. Nutrigenomics tells us how the food we consume contributes to the functioning of our cellular «machinery and thus to that of our whole body. Nutrigenetics tells us how the differences between one person?s «machinery» and another?s (i.e. our unique genome) produce different effects for the same foodstuffs in different individuals. The aim of both is to reach a fuller understanding of the molecular mechanisms that operate in our cellular machinery when we eat, thus developing our unique biological identity. Each of us is different, largely because our DNA sequences are different, making us «function» differently. This is why it is important for us to know ourselves, to know our genome, understand its instructions and behave in the most appropriate way. This attitude may have been naturally more developed in the past thanks to people?s capacity for individual observation and the popular traditions of a particular group of individuals, which were passed down from one generation to another as part of «popular wisdom». Today, on the other hand, this tradition has been largely replaced by advertising and all kinds of messages from «experts» and so-called «experts». We thus need to turn to the new technologies to rediscover ourselves and adopt eating habits that are more in tune with our genomes and our environment. The knowledge we are generating will allow us to move towards more personal nutritional recommendations, providing more accurate predictions for each individual within a group with similar metabolic characteristics.
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