| Summary: | Nutritional genomics, or nutrigenomics, is a promising multidisciplinary field that focuses on studying the interactions between nutritional factors, genetic factors and health outcomes. Its goal is to achieve more efficient individual dietary intervention strategies aimed at preventing disease, improving quality of life and achieving healthy aging. Scientific progress in nutrition, medical and food sciences is having an increasingly profound impact on consumer's approach to nutrition. There is a growing awareness that many chronic diseases are caused by unbalanced diet. In addition to disease prevention, the role of food as an agent for improving health has been proposed and a new class of food, so called functional food, has come into being. This term is used to indicate a food that contains some health-promoting components and not only traditional nutrients. From this point of view we could argue that many nutritional products belong to the family of functional food replete with bioactive peptides, antioxidants, probiotic bacteria, highly absorbable calcium, conjugated linoleic acid and other biologically active components. Knowledge gained from comparing diet/gene interactions in different populations may provide information needed to address the larger problem of global malnutrition and disease. .
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