Nutrition Future

What's on the horizon

Dear Dad,

Legend has it that, Charles Duell, the former commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office proclaimed in 1899, “that everything which can be invented has been invented.”

How different would our lives be in 2024, had Commissioner Duell been correct? No airplanes, traffic signals, or I-phones. Speaking of I-phones…I had a Duell moment prior to the release of the I-phone. My good friend and middle-school-bus-mate told me of Appel’s plans to release an “I-phone,” and I looked down at my I-pod and notoriously said, “How dumb, we already have I-pod’s and cell phones, why would we need them together?”

Whoops.

The field of nutrition has also seen many advancements since Duell’s attributed statements at the turn of the twentieth century. Some advancements have had very positive effects on health, like food safety research, discovering essential vitamins and minerals, and increased food yield to feed a growing population; however some not so positive, like the chemicals that coat our crops, fill our foods, and the hundreds of thousands of ultra- processed foods lining our supermarket shelves also used to feed our “growing” population.

Gazing toward the future there is another development on the horizon that could prove very useful in the world of nutrition; Personal Nutrition Programs. Personal Nutrition programs will use AI and machine learning to crunch large data sets with your medical history, blood panel, biological responses to food, age, sex, etc. to create personalized recommendations of the best foods to fit your specific body makeup.

For example, we know that different foods affect blood sugar at different rates. A chocolate bar, a bowl of fruit, and a pasta dish will all cause spikes in blood glucose, but the peak of the spike, the variance between the three choices, and the time it takes to return to normal ranges is different from person to person based on various factors such as fitness, genetics, and age. Your own Personalized Nutrition Program will tell you what foods cause your personal glucose peaks and valleys and therefore suggest alternatives.

And there’s more…food sensitivities, intolerances, and allergies will be discovered easier than ever before and no longer will you have to wonder why oatmeal for breakfast leaves you feeling sluggish yet gives me the energy to attack the day. In the near future there will be apps designed to tell you specifically the best foods to eat and how your body will respond to them. This technology is hitting the market¹ and in time it will likely be mainstream.

Personalized Nutrition and the treasure trove of information it will provide to better understand nuances of health and diet is certainly enticing for data geeks like me, but dare I write, at risk of being heralded as a non-forward thinking imbecile like Duell, that such an advancement will do little to improve the overall population’s health.

Yes, a personalized nutrition program will be able to tell you that your body responds better to almonds over walnuts, or a whole grain wheat bread versus a multi-grain variety, but (sadly) I promise you that this invention will do little to improve health without accompanying habit changes. Because this technology will not miraculously discover that you need to eat pop-tarts instead of morning fruit, or reach for a cookie because your body is the one-in a-7 billion that needs a Chip’s Ahoy to round out your personalized diet.

Nope, in reality the consensus of what foods best support healthy living has changed very little and will change very little into the future. All it takes to meet 99.9% of your nutritional needs is to eat a diet filled with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, beans, and legumes, and lean meat if you choose.

Dare I proclaim, 100 years into the future this will not change.

With Love,

JSR

1. See https://zoe.com (unaffiliated to this blog)