Now, Xu-Wen Wang, from Harvard Medical School, et al. have analysed dietary intake collected daily, monthly or over a year from five different cohorts. Within each cohort, the authors assessed the relative change in the food and nutrient profiles of selected participants, by counting food items and the amount of each nutrient in grams, respectively. They found that the food intake profile within a cohort varied considerably over time but remained highly personalized. Intra-individual dissimilarity of food consumed was shown to be significantly lower than inter-individual dissimilarity. Opposed to those results, the nutrient profile of food consumed remained highly stable between individuals and personalized.
Based on these findings, Wang et al. have proposed the concept of ‘nutritional redundancy’, in allusion to the well-known phenomenon of ‘functional redundancy’ reported in the human gut microbiome (according to which the gut microbiome taxonomic composition differs substantially among individuals while its functional profile does not). By creating a reference food-nutrient network based on the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies, the authors could also calculate the nutritional redundancy of each participant and evaluate its association with the incidence of chronic diseases. In two different cohorts, nutritional redundancy was found to be associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases after adjusting for age, underscoring the relevance of this type of research for nutrition and health.
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