Metabolomics as a Tool in Nutrition Research

Many studies carried out on animals and humans using nutritional interventions and/or

epidemiological observations have shown that many diseases are linked to poor nutri-
tion. In the past two decades, we have witnessed nutrition research moving from dis-
ease treatment to promotion of health and disease prevention. With this, there has been

an increased emphasis placed on nutritional recommendations. However, considering
the interindividual variability in response to food components, optimum levels of

physiological functions of individuals have to be determined to optimize recommen-
dations, the purpose being to reach personalized nutrition. The recent development of

high-throughput technologies (transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) that
enable the generation of large-scale molecular-level measurements has increased
attention of scientists in medical, biological, and nutritional sciences as these tools

offer the possibility of characterizing global alterations associated with disease con-
ditions or nutritional exposure and subtle changes in metabolism due to a stimuli.