Beyond Nutrition: The Impact of Food on Genes

摘要

The food we eat is composed of complex mixtures of chemicals, many of which are biologically active. Whether nutritive (vitamins, minerals, fatty acids) or non-nutritive (small-molecule "nutraceuticals" such as phytochemicals or other metabolites), these bioactive substances act as dietary signals that manipulate our highly organized, tightly regulated DNA. While consumers mainly focus on taste, convenience, and price, arguably the most important effects of food occur at the molecular level, generating significant effects on disease states in humans, whether good or bad. The science that studies the effect of dietary bioactive compounds on gene expression is called nutrigenomics.