Nutritionists are increasingly adopting "-omics" technologies and cutting-edge bioanalytical tools for "nutritional systems biology" approaches in an effort to provide "personalized human nutrition" based upon the understanding of individual nutritional needs, health status and genotype. Are these promises just hype, or is a fundamental change in human nutrition taking shape?



Objectives:

Explore the key scientific requirements necessary for realizing the personalized nutrition concept, taking into account the recent technology developments; assess the impact of this research for fighting the epidemics of metabolic syndrome, diabetes and obesity.

Highlight the social, ethical, economic and policy challenges that the next generation of health-oriented nutrition research will impose on the different stakeholders.

Raise the awareness of the potentials of functional genomics for food and nutrition research, and thus to improve the transsectoral cooperation between the biopharmaceutical and food industries (as well as high-technology providers) to jointly exploit human systems biology.