What Is Nutrigenomics? Why a ‘Healthy’ Food Might Not Suit Everyone

When the latest food trend doesn’t agree with you

We’ve become very good at being told what to eat.

One year a particular food is something we should avoid, the next it’s being added to everything. Protein is having its moment, fermented foods are everywhere, and there always seems to be another powder, seed, berry or supplement promising to become the missing ingredient in our wellbeing. Food marketing has done an extraordinary job, depending on how you look at it, of encouraging us to trust the latest message about what our bodies need.

Yet most of us can probably think of something we’ve been told is ‘good for us’ that simply doesn’t seem to suit us. We may also instinctively reach for certain foods, feel better eating in a particular way or notice that something affects our energy, digestion, sleep or mood differently from the people around us. We often describe some of this as intuition, and although intuition itself isn’t a genetic test, there are biological reasons why our individual responses can differ. Age, hormones, stress, sleep, gut microbiome, environment and our genetics can all contribute to the way we respond to what we eat. [1]

What is nutrigenomics?

Nutrigenomics explores the relationship between nutrition and our genes, including how nutrients can influence gene expression. A closely related area, nutrigenetics, looks at how differences in our genes may influence our response to food and nutrients. [1] Together, they can give us a more individual picture of nutrition than simply assuming the same advice will work equally well for everybody.

A nutrigenomics report can look at genetic variants involved in numerous biological processes, including how we metabolise particular nutrients, respond to caffeine, manage oxidative stress and interact with pathways associated with inflammation, hormones and stress. This doesn’t mean there is one perfect diet hidden inside our DNA, but it can provide useful information about areas where our individual biology may differ.

It also brings an interesting modern perspective to something humans have understood in other ways for generations. Food has traditionally been closely connected with geography, season, culture, family and the environment around us. Traditional and Indigenous knowledge around food developed through generations of observation and experience, long before we could examine our DNA in a laboratory. Nutrigenomics gives us another way of exploring our relationship with food through the biology we can now see.

Could our bodies know more than we realise?

Intuitive eating is often talked about in terms of listening to hunger, fullness and what our bodies seem to want, but there are many other signals we can become familiar with. Perhaps a particular food leaves you energised while another makes you feel sluggish, or you notice that coffee affects you much more strongly than it affects your partner. You might naturally avoid something that everyone else seems to love, or find that a way of eating recommended as universally healthy simply doesn’t work particularly well for you.

Genetic variation can contribute to some of these differences. Variants can influence the activity of enzymes involved in processes such as nutrient metabolism or the way substances including caffeine are processed. [1] Our genes also interact continuously with everything else happening around them, including what we eat, how much we sleep, our stress levels, age, hormones, movement and environment.

This is where intuition and information can become useful companions. Paying attention to our own responses gives us one kind of information, while nutrigenomics can sometimes provide another piece of the biological picture. Neither requires us to ignore the other.

"Intuition and information can become useful companions."

What if we became more curious about what our bodies are telling us?

Perhaps one of the difficulties with modern nutrition is the amount of noise surrounding it. We’re exposed to advertising, social media, food labels, wellness trends and constantly changing messages about what we should eat, often presented as though one approach should suit everyone. With so many external voices competing for our attention, our own experience can become surprisingly easy to overlook.

A nutrigenomics report can offer more personalised information, but genetic variants are best understood as part of a much wider picture rather than a set of instructions. Finding a variant doesn’t mean a particular outcome is inevitable, and genetics cannot account for every response we have to food. What it can do is help us ask more individual questions about nutrition and why our needs and responses may differ.

For generations, humans have developed relationships with food through body, family, culture, geography, season and observation. Today we have the ability to add genetic information to that picture. Perhaps the interesting part of nutrigenomics isn’t using science to tell us what we should eat, but using it to become more curious about the individual body we have been living in all along.