Precision Nutrition

Obesity is a multifactorial and complex disease. The causes of obesity are really variated, diet, physical activity and, ultimately, lifestyle play a fundamental role. The relationship between these factors and obesity development are modulated by large number of varied individual parameters, such as the genome, epigenome, microbiome, metabolome, transcriptome and resulting interactomes. Emerging scientific knowledge has manifested the importance of considering most of these factors and individual parameters in developing dynamic and accurate nutritional recommendations. In this context, the term Precision Nutrition is key, a new approach to integrate internal and external environmental factors. This Special Issue aims to provide a thorough overview of research progress on Precision Nutrition, exploring new factors that could modulate the energy balance, adiposity and variety of obesity related alterations, for instance diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc.
Precision nutrition is an emerging area of research due to its key role to maintain health status. In this way Alvarez-Pitti et al. review the recent research on Precision Nutrition and its role on prevention and treatment of obesity during pediatric years. In this article, the authors revise the nutrition-based interventions, included in the two levels of personalization proposed by Ordovas et al. in 2018. The first level of personalization is considering the behavioral and phenotype level, including eating habits and physical activity and lifestyle, during pregnancy, lactation period, childhood and adolescence. The second level of personalization includes the biological parameters, including the different response to food and/or nutrients that are conditioned by biochemical parameters, genetic, microbiota and metabolomics. All in all, reveal as tailored nutrition represents a promising approach to prevent and manage obesity.