VITALITY

Personalized Diet Plans Are Key To Healthy Eating Habits

Aug 16, 2016 04:59 PM By Samantha Olson

Personalized diets that rely on three goals help people stick to the plan.Photo courtesy of Pixabay, public domain

Instead of giving generic advice, such as eating five servings of fruits and vegetables or two servings of fish each week, participants were instructed to address only certain eating habits that were relevant to their current diets, health, or DNA. While some were told to consume less meat or salt, others were told to add more whole wheat into their breakfast. By simply following three personalized food goals, participants were significantly more likely to comply.  

"Compared with the control group, the personalized nutrition groups had about double the improvement in overall healthiness of their diets,” Mathers said. “We expect this to translate, eventually, to bigger improvements in health and wellbeing. This approach could be scaled up to help much larger numbers of people chose healthier eating patterns and could be a valuable tool for improving public health."

Source: Mathers J, Livingstone KM, and Celis-Morales C, et al. Effect of personalized nutrition on health-related behaviour change evidence from the Food4Me European randomized controlled trial. International Journal of Epidemiology. 2016.