The long-recognized centrality and importance of nutrition for good health naturally lead to the practical question of what to eat to stay healthy.
Many studies have revealed profound differences among individuals in disease risk and biological responses to diet, making it challenging to fully answer this question. This necessitates moving beyond a one-size-fits-all dietary prescription for optimal health and disease prevention.
The modern view of food and medicine has led to a substantial shift in nutrition research and practice known as precision nutrition, which has great potential to offer multidimensional and dynamic nutrition recommendations. Like precision medicine, the field of precision nutrition aims to understand the health effects of the complex interplay among genetics, microbiome, antibiotic and probiotic use, metabolism, food environment, and physical activity, as well as economic, social, and other behavioral characteristics. Only with a firm grasp of the contributions and interrelationships among these factors will it be possible to develop targeted nutrition guidance for diverse individuals in a highly diverse world.