The concepts of health – healthy food, healthy living – are constantly in the media. Obesity and lifestyle problems are in the mainstream of these presentations, but people seem not to understand the nature of nutrition and physical activity fully.
A human body contains information – the metabolome – on 3000 metabolites, 1200 drugs, 3500 food components. The metabolome could be used to make up individual advice on what healthy living is. E.g. there are variations in what bacteria we have in our bodies and how people respond to food. This complicates the intake of medicine as well as the making of diets for people.
If we can catalogue the metabolome we can design what we take into our body – the old food will never be the same again – may be you should change the level of your bacteria today, maybe remove some dangerous stuff or add some that are beneficial.
The idea of food that is generally healthy is out – that depends on your metabolome!
See also The Human Metabolome Project
Metabolism: the chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life