What do your genes want you to eat?
Sacramento shoppers have found a new way of looking at disease that doctors are learning about from nutritionists and geneticists, including the metabolic and genetic dietitian who draws upon genetics and nutrition. Ancestry and diet are linked by biology, culture, and choices. It’s all about collaborating with your genes and eating your 'ancestral' diet.
For example, the New York Times Magazine published an article by NY Times Magazine writer Bruce Grierson titled, “What Your Genes Want You to Eat: New Way to Look at Disease.” The article also appeared in the Sacramento Bee, a daily newspaper, on Sunday July 13, 2003 on the Science page. The opening sentence began with reference to a "trip to the diet doc, circa 2013."
Sundays are great for reading the Science page in the Forum section. There’s time to read the cutting-edge science articles, many of which are reprinted from other, major urban publications. It’s a family tradition for four decades.
Do you choose your food by habit or biology? Consumers need a guide to DNA testing for nutritional genomics as well as for ancestry and family history. Specific genetic variants interact and relate to nutrition.
Many Sacramentans are impressed by the media buzz around the relatively new field of nutritional genomics. Last year the media buzz circled around testing DNA for ancient ancestry and genealogy, during which many people, especially those from genealogy interest groups took several DNA tests for ancestry and enjoyed the results. This year DNA and diet is fast-track news with terms such as "smart foods," and 'nutrigenomics.' DNA and foods also tie into food safety and security issues.
Most shoppers like to know that when they go into a health food store and buy a package of imported powdered ginger under the title of herbs or botanicals that it’s clean and contains no toxic pesticides, residues, bad bacteria, or unsafe chemicals. People often think about who inspects these imports, and do they rush through, take enough time, or have enough staff? If you buy fresh ginger root, are you concerned whether it’s organic or still full of pesticide residue? On the other hand, who has time to think these thoughts?
It all came rushing back when our family went into a health food store last month, walked past an open bin where a child about twelve years old had just put her hand into the couscous, grabbed a fist full of the grain-like pasta, tossed it into her mouth, chewed it, spit it back into her palm and replaced the couscous that she had just spit into her hand, back into the bin with the rest of the grain. Her mother was busy looking at other products.
She didn’t realize we were standing beside her ready to take a scoop of the oat groats in the next bin. The scoop hit the floor, and she picked it up and replaced it inside the bin of food after it had been on the floor. The cashier was in the front of the store, the manager in the back room.
Why couldn’t the store change the bins so that nobody else could spit into the grain? When we brought this to the cashier’s attention, she shrugged, looked down, and acted as if nothing had happened. Did you ever wonder at that instant, if this is how one consumer’s word is received, how will the public perceive anyone else who witnesses similar behavior?
At another Sacramento food market, one child, about age six, opened the trail mix bin, put his hand in and grabbed the chocolate and nuts mix, took a mouthful, and put his hand wet from his mouth back into the bin to sample another scoop. His mother ignored him and just moved on with the child trailing behind, eye level at the level of the bins.
That's why supermarkets should have the type of closed bins that work with a lever, where you can't put your hands inside the food items. Unfortunately the closed bins were up high at the eye level of an adult, whereas the easily opened bins were at the level of a small child's eyes.
There’s power in numbers, in grouping together. If only there was a video camera available at that moment. There’s also power in the the media—the reputable, credible media that bridges gaps between science and the public. It’s time for some consumers to become “media people.” Let’s watch the watchers.
The point to be made here is that for the sake of food safety, bins should be closed and operate only when an adult pulls a lever to release the food into a bag, not at the level of a child of age 6-10 where all the child or adult has to do is open the bin and sample it by hand or drop hair into the trail mix, grain, or other items.
When you have easily opened bins at low level where a child easily can reach filled with candy, nuts, raisins, and chocolate, it's too easy to have unwashed hands reaching into the bins constantly. The moral of the story is to keep food clean, safe, and to find out what your genes want you to eat.
DNA Testing for Nutritional Genomics and Ancestry
Tailor what you eat to your DNA. This book is a consumer’s guide to nutritional genomics. It’s a guide to how your particular genes and ancestry respond to food—selected foods tailored or prescribed to nourish your individual genetic profile known as your genetic expression. Consumer involvement in nutritional genomics is important.
Nutritional genomics, often abbreviated as ‘nutrigenomics’ is about increasing that success rate. How will science working together with the consumer tackle the issues confronting us as the population ages? Consumer involvement can democratize the science of nutritional genomics by improving diets for better health. You can ask to work on ethics boards or create your own. How is discovering deep ancestry through DNA testing related to the ways that food affects your health?
Learn to interpret the expression of your genes before you count your calories. If you’re supposed to eat ‘bright’ for your ‘genotype,’ then you begin by mapping your genetic expression and learning how the raw data applies in a practical way to what you consume. This means genetic testing, interpretation, and application to food.
Nutritional Genomics for the Consumer
How are you managing your gene expression? In what direction are you moving? How do you make more intelligent choices of food to nourish your individual genotype? What is meant by intelligent foods that target and nourish specific genes?
Clinical dietetitians and nutritionists, by allying with molecular geneticists, genetics counselors, physicians, molecular genealogists, family historians, phenomics professionals, nutritional and medical anthropologists, and archaeogeneticists are collaborating with consumers of genetics testing, but what are they really sharing?
If not so much raw materials such as DNA from donors, is shared, then how about access to information—databases and various discussion forums online and e-mailing lists equally open to consumers, licensed healthcare providers, and research scientists? Who controls access to new research—the consumers, the corporations, or the scientists?
Can the average consumer afford to find out what to eat for improved health and nourishment based upon tests of genetic expression? Can consumers override any inherited risks revealed in the genetic signature with foods and nutraceuticals individually tailored? What does it mean to eat ‘smarter’ foods that target specific genes compared to eating more intelligently regarding choice?
Scientists compare genetic distances between populations by comparing the frequencies of forms of genes called ‘alleles.’ Mutant alleles can be mapped as population genetics markers. Some, but not all mutations in genes may put you at risk for certain chronic diseases if you eat the wrong foods for your genotype. The solution is to eat more ‘intelligent’ foods customized to your individual genetic profile.
Research also looks at rare alleles. Their rarity gives them special power as markers of genetic similarity. There’s a good chance two identical mutant alleles share a common origin. You can map genes for ancestral origin, migrations, or to reveal risks of disease depending upon which genes you map.
This book is for beginners with no science background. It’s a consumer’s guide book to nutritional genomics—genetic testing and profiling for foods tailored to your genotype and ancestry. The chapters also are about how to interpret DNA testing for family history and ancestry.
How do you as a consumer, not a scientist, choose the smartest food tailored to your genetic signature? How do you interpret your DNA test results for ancestry or family history? What is the link between tailoring your foods to your genetic expression and tracing your ancestry though DNA testing? And what genes are tested for either reason? How do you bridge the gap between nutritional genomics profiling and testing DNA for deep ancestral origins?
Does ethnicity play any role in tailoring your food and nutraceuticals, drug dosages, or healthcare? How much can the average consumer self-educate and/or start a private DNA bank for a consumer or patient group? How do you raise funds, contract with research scientists, and form or serve groups needing their DNA researched for specific reasons? How does learning how to interpret the results of your DNA tests for ancestry relate to understanding genetic tests for cardiovascular or other inheritable risks?
Start researching on your own what you need to know as a consumer to have more choices in customizing foods for your genetic signature—your genotype. What are some realistic applications of genetic testing and profiling?
This book will lead you to find out more about taking control of what happens to DNA that you may donate for research. You’ll find out how to be in charge of your own nourishment and nutrition. Genetic profiling helps you to customize what you eat. How do you nourish your body? What can your genes reveal to you through genetic testing and profiling? It’s your private information and should remain private. A good place to release it finally would be in a time capsule and history scrapbook for your heirs. Here are how some branches of human genetic history are linked to your nutrition, ancestry, and most of all nourishment.
Prosopography is all about human history and genes that travel because your genes have both a cultural and a biological component. The cultural component includes onomastics which is the study of the origin of a name and its geographical and historical utilization. Put all these branches of molecular genetics together with molecular genealogy. Add nutritional genomics, and what do you have? Knowledge of how every molecule in your body responds to certain foods, lifestyles, exercise, healthcare, and an open door to learning how your respond to nutrition and nourishment.
Multidisciplinary nutrition research and collaboration is necessary for nutritional genomics to bring together diverse expertise. Scientists working in the disciplines of nutrition, biochemistry, and genetics need to share, collaborate, and interface in this field. If scientists are more concerned about positioning themselves first in publishing their research and won’t share DNA with all scientists, how can research ever move forward?
You might want to read “The Metabolic Basis of Inherited Disorders,” 6th ed. McGraw-Hill, New York: 2649-2680, 1989. Then compare the latest research in nutritional genomics on how smart foods (foods tailored to your genetic signature) influence risk of chronic disease. The longer science studies the entire genome (rather than the specific SNPs for certain chronic diseases) the more information will be forthcoming on how food and lifestyle influence your health based on the genes you inherited.
According to the National Institutes of Health (reprinted here with permission) from their website, “As medicines move through the body, they interact with thousands of molecules called proteins. Because each person is genetically unique, we all have tiny differences in these proteins, which can affect the way medicines do their jobs.”
Foods Tailored to Your Genotype
How do your genes respond to what you eat? How many diet-by-DNA book titles are there? Books on smarter foods? Tailored menus? Extracts of plants? DNA tests for ancestry? Ancestry and eating? Genes are distributed, function, and work in such ways that nearly every reasonable diet could work well in about six percent of the population.
Are you eating smart foods—foods tailored to your genotype—DNA, your ancestry, and your entire genome of genes? Are you ready to get a picture of your response to your nutrition? How can you eat to nourish your genotype? According to Genomics 120, a science, nutrition, and health website, are you wondering why in the United States currently only 50,000 people out of some 280 million live to be even 100 years old, or that your body may be aging nearly twice the rate it should be because you’re eating the wrong food for your genetic signature?
There is a strong connection between nutrition and genotype, especially in regards to your cardiovascular and central nervous system health. So you need to tailor foods intelligently to your genetic expression. The media buzz about ‘intelligent’ foods or ‘smart’ foods really means eating clean, safe, whole foods based on what your individual genes need to thrive. Not all your genes are tested. You might start your food research at the website of Food Resource, a source of science-based and business savvy information for the food industry.
What happens when diet books for your condition aren’t working for you? Maybe salt restriction isn’t working but exercise is for your condition. How do your genes respond to nutrition and nourishment? Are your genes intelligent, conscious, and communicating with you about their nutritional needs? If they are, so are the foods you eat. Your genes interact and collaborate as a team.
The language of communication is written in the human genome, in your individual genetic signature—in your DNA, in particular SNPs, and in all your genes and cellular material. Even your blood type is expressed in all the cells of your body. How does all this information signal you about what ‘smart’ foods and nutraceuticals to choose in order to help prevent or delay chronic disease for which your genes may put you at risk?
A slogan reads, “Smart foods for intelligent people.” Nutritional genomics is a buzz word in the news. Testing DNA for ancestry also bridges gaps in regard to customizing smarter foods to your genotype. Phenomics is about customized healthcare and medicine tailored to your genetic profile. Prosopography is an independent science of social history embracing genealogy, onomastics and demography. If you’re interested in metabolic typing, one website for Personal Metabolic Typing is Whole Body Health. Dentists may be interested to know that gum disease is genetic and may be caused by a genetic predisposition to diabetes, heart disease, or low birth weight. A genetic profile on patients with deep pockets of gum disease might be useful. Check out the Holistic Dental Network.
Cracking the human genome code is so new and tests so costly. Currently only certain genetic markers are tested. The genetic signatures tested include genes that tell you about risk for certain diseases. Nutritional genomics as a field of research also is abbreviated as a generic term to read ‘nutrigenomics.’
Without testing all the genes, how can you know about all the diseases for which you may be at risk? And without knowing all the information that every one of your gene’s reveals, how can you develop a plan to override your genetic risks by nourishing your genes with what they need to stay healthier? Here is how some scientists answered these questions.
According to Dr. Fredric D. Abramson, Ph.D, S.M., President and CEO of AlphaGenics, Inc., “The key to using diet to manage genes and health lies in managing gene expression (which we call the Expressitype). Knowing your genotype merely tells you a starting point. Genotype is like knowing where the entrance ramps to an interstate can be found. They are important to know, but tell you absolutely nothing about what direction to travel or how the journey will go. That is why Expressitype must be the focus.” See the website of AlphaGenics, Inc.
Alpha Genics, Inc. is a nutrigenomics science company. A sidebar on the company’s website from Dr. Fredric Abramson, CEO reads (reprinted here with permission), “We are about to see a revolution in our concept of diet. Each of us is a unique organism and for the first time in human history, genetic research is confirming that one diet is not optimum for everyone."
Science is discovering that each individual’s DNA processes food and nutritious supplements in a unique way. "Through the development of a cutting-edge DNA analytical system and consumer guidance, Alpha Genics will be able to tune nutrition to meet the needs of each individual resulting in optimum health, peak performance, and enhanced creativity."
Alpha-Genics Inc. also has an independent, separate Ethics Board. It's not part of the regular Board of Directors. It has five members: three outsiders, one representative from the Board of Directors, and one representative of the employees. The Ethics Board has no veto power, but has a seat on the Board of Directors. Compensation for the Ethics Board members comes through a blind trust, which means the Ethics Board has neither control nor knowledge of how the funds develop.
“I created this because I think companies need to have independent voices to provide reality checks,” says Dr. Fredric Abramson. “It is something like that scene in Patton when he talks about the Roman conqueror returning home to glory, with someone standing just beside him reminding him that fame is fleeting. An independent Ethics Board helps us make better choices.”
Sacramento Shoppers Can Bridge the Gap Between Ethics Boards and The Media
Consumers can bridge the gap between ethics boards and the media by acting as liaisons, ombudsmen, lobbyists, trustees, recruiters, communicators, independent board members, fee-for-service contractors, industry watchers, or volunteers. Get involved in the nutritional genomics industry looking closely at "smart foods." What do your genes really want you to eat on a daily basis? How can you find out in an affordable way?
One way to communicate with the genetics testing services, sometimes offered by a few HMOs, is to offer your services, for example, making corporate gift baskets full of information about "smart foods" or nutritional genomics research that's published in plain language for shoppers. You even can put together corporate gift baskets full of nutritional genomics products or samples.
For fundraising to afford genetic testing to tailor your food to your genes, you might throw a "smart foods" or designer foods nutritional genomics party in any home, office, or meeting pace, in church basements, teacher’s lounges after school, or at conventions and corporate meetings. Make video or audio recordings about nutritional genomics, smart foods, or designer foods and post the radio-length broadcasts to your blog or other website.
So many news stories in the media give the impression that the average consumer will have to wait a decade for genomic testing to be applied to customized foods. Sometimes nutrition is all about rescuing the particular food or food group. You heard of the TV program, 'Dresscue' Me? That's where they rescue the dress and then dress the individual. How about 'Fescue Me,' that is rescue the food and tailor the vittles to the individual's genes?
Check out my other Sacramento Examiner columns on nutrition, healthy trends, green health, women's issues, holistic health, and media & culture
Sacramento Nutrition Examiner
Sacramento Healthy Trends Examiner
Sacramento Women's Issues Examiner
Sacramento Media & Culture Examiner
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