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Updated: Jul 23, 2025

Quantification of Information Encoded by Gene Expression Levels During Lifespan Modulation Under Broad-range Dietary Restriction in C. elegans
Published on: August 16, 2017
Nutritional redundancy in the human diet and its application in phenotype association studies
Xu-Wen Wang1, Yang Hu2, Giulia Menichetti1,3
1Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
Abstract:
Studying human dietary intake may help us identify effective measures to treat or prevent many chronic diseases whose natural histories are influenced by nutritional factors. Here, by examining five cohorts with dietary intake data collected on different time scales, we show that the food intake profile varies substantially across individuals and over time, while the nutritional intake profile appears fairly stable. We refer to this phenomenon as 'nutritional redundancy' and attribute it to the nested structure of the food-nutrient network. This network enables us to quantify the level of nutritional redundancy for each diet assessment of any individual. Interestingly, this nutritional redundancy measure does not strongly correlate with any classical healthy diet scores, but its performance in predicting healthy aging shows comparable strength. Moreover, after adjusting for age, we find that a high nutritional redundancy is associated with lower risks of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
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