Assessment of nutritional profiles: a novel system based on a comprehensive approach

Nutrition and health or nutrients and health?

Diet is an important contributor to human health and public health bodies are issuing guidelines aimed at favouring healthy food choices. The aim of our paper is to discuss the aspects underlying the concept of nutrient profiles, that is, defining levels of energy, some macronutrients, or salt which should not be exceeded in individual foods, according to the available evidence, to help in understanding to what extent such approach may actually be useful for improving nutrition and quality of life of European consumers. We list several pitfalls and oversimplifications of the current approaches to nutrient profiling and of the dichotomic classification of foods into "healthy" and "unhealthy" products. In view of the current "Facilitating healthier food choices - establishing nutrient profiles" EU initiative, we believe that further debate among all stakeholders is warranted and must consider all the limitations outlined in this paper.

Can experimental pharmacology be always applied to human nutrition?

Randomized clinical trials are the gold standard of pharmacology and are the only way to provide solid and evidence-based data. However, they are difficult to apply to nutrition-based settings. This article outlines the major differences between pharmacology and nutrition research and indicates some potential pathways to follow during claim building.

A genetic perspective on nutritional profiles: do we still need them?

BACKGROUND

The emergence of nutritional genomics and the availability of nutrigenetic tests, which use genetic information to identify food products suited/not suited to the individual nutrigenetic profile, allow defining personalized dietary advice.

AIM

To compare personalized dietary advice provided to 24 Italian children by a nutrigenetic test based on the recommendations from 2 different, widely employed nutrient profiling (NP) schemes, the USA Health Claims (USAHC) and the Guidelines for Responsible Food Marketing to Children, published by the US Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI); the genetic test-NP agreement regarding 50 commonly eaten foods has been calculated.

METHODS

Twelve normal-weight and 12 overweight children were recruited in the Trieste district (North-East Italy), and nutrigenetic testing was offered using the G-Diet® Nutrigenomic Kit. Variants of 20 genes were tested and personalized dietary advice was formulated for each subject. The agreement between the NP schemes and among the nutrigenomic indications and both profiles was computed using Cohen's κ.

RESULTS

Agreement between the USAHC and CSPI schemes was very poor overall (Cohen's κ=0.66). The agreement among the nutrigenomic indications and profiles ranged overall from 0.43 to 0.74 for each nutrigenomic profile with the USAHC, and from 0.29 to 0.80 with the CSPI.

CONCLUSION

Disagreement on food classification among different NP schemes and inconsistencies deriving from nutrigenetic tests advocate more research into this area.