Nutrition research paradigm needs to change for nutrigenomics: Expert

At the recent IFT Annual Meeting and Expo, Stephen Daniells talked to Dr Jim Kaput, director of FDA’s Division of Personalized Nutrition and Medicine about the paradigm shift needed to move personalized nutrition forward.

The current research approach of grouping people together is not in-keeping with personalized nutrition, said Dr Kaput. “You have to think of a new paradigm: How do you conduct the research in order to get to the individual risk factor or the individual benefit factor for blueberries, or blackberries, or whatever food you are looking at.”

The advances in the field of nutrigenomics today do have significant implications for the food industry, said Dr Kaput: “We need to understand the mechanism by which the nutrients in food can alter health, and from that we can tell the food manufacturers what to put in their products.”

“We need to be more science-based when we talk to the food manufacturers so we can design better foods. We have to be realistic, we definitely need manufactured foods, but we have to manufacture them the right way,” he added.

The views expressed in this video are those of Jim Kaput and not those of the FDA.