How to tailor smart foods to your family genogram

April 10, 5:28 PMSacramento Nutrition ExaminerAnne Hart

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 Should you have your genes tested to find out which smart foods you could be eating? Genomic testing--for part of a person's total genome--is possible today. Experts argue about whether we have 30,000 or 70,000 genes, or somewhere in between. Genotype is the way you identify which genes a person has.

Seeking smart foods is about making informed eating choices to enhance your life. Searching for smart foods is about identifying foods that are better for you. Finding smart foods may help you understand how to change your workout plan to get the best results.

Using smart foods help you target and value your strengths.  Smart foods show your weaknesses as something to work at to overcome. If smart foods can do all that, as the genetic testing companies note, how can you identify which smart foods bring balance to you?

It's not your genotype which determines what you need to eat for balance and a chance at being healthier. It is the work that your specific genes do. Think of genotype as the location of exit ramps on an interstate. You need to know where these are, but they tell you nothing about where you are going and what the journey will be like.

To identify these, you study each gene's level of activity, called “gene expression.” When I interviewed the CEO of AlphaGenics back in 2004, gene expression  at AlphaGenics  was called the Expressitype.

Scientists conclude that gene expresses changes over time for many genes. Childhood, adolescence, and old age are substantially under genetic control. Some people age faster than other. It's in their genes. Right now testing a few genes costs a fair amount. And seldom is gene testing covered by insurance.

Over time, the technology advances will enable very low cost tests. For example, measuring gene expression in several thousand genes can cost from $800 to $3,000, depending on who does it. But  in Japan testing sometimes costs less than $100 for 900 or more genes. Costs go down as time moves on.

Some companies offer genetic tests under $1,000 with monthly follow-ups of around $79. The monthly fee lets you contact the company by phone or email anytime to ask whether something you want to eat might help you or not. You can check out what AlphaGenics is working on nowadays. Back in 2004 they worked with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to develop a small implantable device that measured vital chemicals in the blood, and sent signals outside the body. Such a device helped to track what's happening in a person around the clock, every day, with much more accuracy and less guesswork.

Today, the most important area of research in nutritional genomics today is how the dietary system, interacts with the thousands of genes in the genome to produce health, or illness. The dietary system (systems biology) is composed of hundreds and thousands of chemicals in varying dosages.

Eating one single food isn’t an answer. A balance of what foods you eat over time is what counts, not whether you eat blueberries, bananas or rice.

The study of smart foods is about understanding the dynamics of how changes in diet influence the work each person's genes is doing. The value of systems biology is that ultimately, science will be able to identify individualized responses to diet, based on genetic composition. If you want answers, look to wise food traditions and folklore and study your family history.

Tailor your diet to your family history, to what diseases show up repeatedly in your family. It's important to draw up a genogram, a medical family history and put it in a time capsule or keepsake album to give to the next generation. Wise food traditions is about recording individual and family responses to food from generation to generation, even if our genes recombine with each generation.