Prevent and treat disease with personalized nutrition!
The cutting edge of personalized nutrition, from experts in academia, industry, and the medical community.

This book is a collection of books written by three experts from academia, industry, and the medical field, and provides a front-line overview of what research and results are being achieved in personalized nutrition in academia, how businesses and other industries are creating and implementing business models, and how the medical community is applying personalized nutrition to patients.


Why is personalized nutrition necessary? Because there's no one-size-fits-all nutrition or food plan.
Each person has a different genome, epigenetics, metabolome, and lifestyle, and therefore different nutritional and dietary needs.
Some people can sleep well even if they drink coffee like water, while others can't sleep even after drinking just one cup of coffee.
Some people don't get drunk no matter how much they drink, while others get red in the face and feel unwell after just one drop.
Some people gain weight just by drinking water, while others don't gain weight no matter how much they eat.
Such differences occur even among identical twins.
Even if you are born with poor or bad genes, you can treat and prevent them in advance with personalized nutrition and diet.
This is why personalized nutrition (precision nutrition) and diet are becoming increasingly important.
This book covers the hottest topics at the heart of preventive medicine and future medicine.

Israel's Personalized Nutrition Research (PNP) has presented several interesting research findings that highlight the importance of personalized nutrition and food in managing human health.
To investigate within-subject variation and intra-subject differences in response to a specific food served identically, all participants were given three types of standardized meals (bread, bread and butter, and glucose) twice. We found that postprandial glycemic responses were similar within individuals, but postprandial glycemic responses to the same meal (bread) varied between individuals.
--- p.26

Unfortunately, our country lacks research that examines the differences in responses to the same food based on individual physiological and environmental differences, such as Israel's Personalized Nutrition Research Program (PNP), the UK's Predict 1, and the US' Precision Nutrition Research Program (NPH).
However, in Korea, a national integrated bio big data construction project is underway to establish a foundation for precision medicine, and the goal is to collect data from 1 million voluntary health and genetic information providers, including patients with rare diseases and the general public.25 In order to conduct proper personalized nutrition research in Korea, we need our own precision nutrition research plan that collects response data to the same diet from participants in the national integrated bio big data construction project and designs algorithms based on that data.
--- p.53

Humans are biologically and environmentally very diverse.
Personalized nutrition aims to maintain a healthy lifestyle, prevent disease, and manage it by recommending dietary options based on one or a combination of individual characteristics, such as genetic background, gut microbiome, metabolic capacity, and environmental exposure.
This goes beyond the concept of nutrigenomics based on an individual's genes to identify the nutrients an individual needs based on physiological and environmental differences, and aims to design algorithms by digitizing and collecting an individual's response to the same foods and nutrients.

--- p.61

The personalized nutrition (Personalized Nutrition) or precision nutrition market is still in its early stages of industrialization.
However, it is expected that this will continue to expand in the future as DTC genetic testing, blood testing, urine testing, and intestinal microbiome testing become more active, along with healthcare management through mobile apps, personal lifestyle analysis, advancement of big data-based artificial intelligence algorithms, and growth in the health functional food market.
We have developed by taking the lead and making various attempts, focusing on startups.
Recently, large corporations have also shown active interest and are competing to enter the market.
--- p.71

In Korea, various companies are also preparing customized health functional foods.
According to the Korea Health Functional Food Association, the domestic health functional food market in 2021 exceeded 5 trillion won for the first time, reaching approximately 5.5 trillion won.
In particular, Korea is no exception. The impact of COVID-19, which has swept the globe, has led to increased interest in personal immunity, health management, and wellness, leading to increased purchases of health functional foods. Even in the era of COVID-19, this interest has not diminished and continues to grow. As a result, more customers will be interested in disease prevention rather than treatment, and the market is expected to grow accordingly.
However, many companies are already rushing to launch products.
Recently, pharmaceutical companies that produce specialized medicines, beauty companies that produce cosmetics, and even food companies that specialize in food are jumping into the health functional food manufacturing business.

--- p.87

According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the medifood industry grew from approximately 27 billion won in 2010 to approximately 50 billion won in 2016 and approximately 78 billion won in 2019.
Considering the accelerated aging of the population and the increase in chronic diseases, the market is expected to grow further, similar to medical foods in the United States, and to continue to expand, similar to Japan, which has a high elderly population like Korea.
Accordingly, many companies are competing to develop and industrialize medifood, and it is recognized as an essential element for improving the quality of life and living a disease-free life in the 100-year era.
The global market size was approximately 21 trillion won in 2018 and is expected to reach 35 trillion won by 2025.
--- p.111

A gene is the smallest unit that can be translated into a protein, and if DNA were expressed as a book, it would correspond to a sentence in the book.
The genome is the sum total of bases that make up genes, which corresponds to the words that make up a sentence.
But let's go into one more thing here: not all human DNA is the same.
Only 99.7% is the same, the remaining 0.3% is different for each person.
This is called a variant.
A single DNA molecule consists of approximately 3 billion bases.
Of these, about 10 million base pairs, or 0.3%, differ from person to person.
This variation is the basis of biological diversity, including differences between people, such as differences in facial features, skin color, hair shape, height, and weight.
Biological diversity isn't just about appearance.

--- p.124~125

Each person's biological activity is different.
Some people can't sleep when they drink coffee, while others can sleep well even if they drink coffee like water.
Some people get red in the face and feel sick after just one glass of alcohol, while others don't get drunk no matter how much they drink.
Some people respond well to certain medications, while others do not respond well and are more prone to side effects.
Furthermore, some people are born with rare diseases or have a predisposition to developing diseases such as cancer, dementia, or heart disease.
All of this is not determined by an individual's efforts or practice, but is something that can be said to be innate, something called constitution or predisposition.
What about food and nutrition? Perhaps the answer will come immediately if you reflect on the experiences of all readers of this article.
Everyone is different! Some people find red ginseng works well, while others experience fever and discomfort when eating only red ginseng.
Some people get diarrhea when they drink milk, and some people can't lose weight even if they follow everyone else's diet.

--- p.125

Many studies have shown that certain lifestyle habits affect telomere length.
A 2014 study published in the International Journal of Obesity found that following a Mediterranean diet for five years resulted in longer telomeres.
This means that the Mediterranean diet helps with anti-aging.
A 2013 study published in the journal The Lancet found that five years of active exercise in prostate cancer patients resulted in longer telomeres.
Telomeres in white blood cells can be lengthened in a relatively short period of time simply through weight loss, exercise, and improved eating habits, so they can also be used as an indicator of a healthy lifestyle.

--- p.172~173