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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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