Metabolomic Data May Support the Development of Personalized Nutrition Approaches to Type 2 Diabetes Management

Diet is a major modifiable risk factor for type 2 diabetes (T2D), and suboptimal diets continue to contribute substantially to the population burden of T2D. Personalized nutrition proponents argue that specializing recommendations to interindividual differences in diet-health relationships will yield reductions in disease risk. However, how to personalize diet, and to whom, to reduce T2D risk remains unclear. Metabolites offer promise in this respect, as they capture (in part) dietary intake after the processes of digestion, processing, and absorption. The incorporation of metabolite data into diet-health studies therefore offers the opportunity to examine how the effects of food on the metabolome differ between individuals, and the extent that these differences give rise to differential diet-health associations. Ultimately, such studies hold promise for identifying personalized nutrition strategies to reduce the population-level burden of T2D.