‘Habit’ Uses Your DNA to Act as Your Personal Nutritionist

A new company open now to beta testing is boasting that it can help achieve your diet goals by going far beyond any other diet trend. Because every person is different, these generalized plans don’t affect everyone the same, and if one person metabolizes one food better or more efficiently than another, two people eating the same health food will see different effects. Instead of taking a generalized approach at helping their clients, Habit asks for a DNA sample and formulates a nutrition plan based solely on each individual client. But it gets better (and weirder) they will also pair you with a Habit nutrition coach and they deliver meals cooked according to your personal genomic blueprint and health goals.

So how do they make this blueprint? Well, DNA codes for every process your body undergoes metabolism is no different and the company lab checks for over 60 individual biomarkers that together describe how the individual will ‘react’ or metabolize food. They also require the client to take a liquid meal supplement once in the beginning of the service to check “phenotypic flexibility” which just gives a working understanding of your metabolism in action (think of it like a control in an experiment). From this information, they make a blueprint of an optimal balanced diet for the individual.

It’s not all about losing weight either--the clients express their goal and the coaches and personalized food help them reach that goal. So whether it’s lose some weight, training for a sport, healthily putting on weight, Habit claims to be the best help to you. The company has a very interesting goal and procedure and personally I’m excited to hear more about the results of their beta testing.

Links:

http://www.popsci.com/personalized-nutrition-company-will-use-your-dna-to-tell-you-what-to-eat?dom=currents&src=syn

https://habit.com/our-science/

Teenage Obesity

Obesity means having too much body fat. This is different from being overweight, which means weighing too much. Normally obesity is focused more on young children and adults. This article, published in the New York Daily News by Katie Charles, discusses the issue of the high risk of obesity in adolescents. Dr. Christopher Ochner, a clinical researcher said “The rate of obesity in adolescents in the past 30 years has risen faster than in children and nearly three times as fast as in adults.” Studies show that 70% of obese teens become obese adults. This shows the importance of why obesity should be approached during the teenage years. Both boys and girls can be at risk of becoming obese. Once a person becomes obese it is harder to lose the weight because the person’s body will get used to the weight. There are currently few resources for overweight teens. Dr. Ochner is working on a program at his center on preventing obesity.

In my opinion, preventing obesity while it can still be prevented is the best approach. Focusing more on obese teens will help prevent further problems for their adulthood. For example, this will reduce the amount of obese-related diseases in a person like type 2-diabetes. It will create a healthier living habit. 

People Might Be Genetically Programmed to Eat More Than Others

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have discovered big differences in the variability of eating habits amongst pigs.  The study looked at pigs with comparison to humans genetic mapping to reveal specific genes on the human genome known to be involved with obesity.  The researchers monitored the eating habits of pigs rather than humans because it would be nearly impossible to monitor that many humans hourly for that extent of time.  Basically, the research team wanted to figure out and understand why when some people get hungry they over eat, while others have control over how much they eat.  Pigs are a popular study model for researchers studying human obesity because they have similar genomes and digestive systems with humans.  Over a thousand pigs were given an abundance of food supply during a time span of four years, and each of the pigs were monitored daily.  The results were very interesting, there were big differences in the variability of the pigs eating habits. Some pigs with certain genetic variants were overeating as a normal behavior, proving they were genetically programmed to eat more food than other pigs. Kadarmideen states, "This is the first study in the world looking at pig to human comparative genetic mapping to reveal key genes on the human genome (e.g. on chromosomes 6 and 17) that are known to be involved in human obesity and some new genes; together they may explain why we crave for (more and sometimes unhealthy) food and why some of us overeat, so consequently developing obesity and diabetes, both of which are key societal and public health problems".  In the future it is possible that a simple blood test could determine if that person is more likely to have unhealthy eating habits, which could lead to diseases such as diabetes or obesity.  I believe this would be quite remarkable if people were able to take a simple blood test to figure out what kind of eating behaviors they geneticaly have.  It would allow for better understanding of the obseity genes and why some individuals eat like they do.  Although, I firmly believe that even if people know they might have genetically unhealthy eating habits, it all comes down to the individual person on changing these bad habits.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/267024.php
http://obesityinamerica.org/