Nutritional Genetics: Future of Therapeutic Nutrition—A Mini-Review

This review explores the evolving concepts of nutrition, therapeutic nutrition, and the burgeoning field of nutritional genomics. Nutrition is defined as the science explaining how nutrients and other food substances interact with an organism's growth, reproduction, health, and disease states, encompassing processes such as ingestion, absorption, biosynthesis, catabolism, and excretion. Therapeutic nutrition, or Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT), is a clinical approach utilizing specific dietary regimens to manage medical conditions and their associated symptoms. Nutritional genomics, a multidisciplinary field, investigates the complex relationship between the human genome, nutrition, and health. It is divided into two primary branches: nutrigenomics, which examines the impact of nutrients on gene expression and metabolic outcomes, and nutrigenetics, which studies how individual genetic variations influence the body's response to diet. This review highlights the potential of these fields in providing personalized nutritional interventions to prevent and manage chronic diseases.