Personalized Nutrient Recommendations

What "nutrient recommendation" can mean

• Population guidance. Public bodies give general guidance. The NHS says most people should get all the nutrients they need from a varied, balanced diet, though some people may need supplements. [1] The NHS page was marked as last reviewed in 2020, so check current guidance. See Personalized vs Population-Level Nutrition Advice.
• Clinical care. A clinician may recommend a nutrient for a diagnosed need, such as a documented deficiency. That is medical care and outside this page.
• Consumer personalization. An algorithm suggests nutrients from inputs such as diet logs, blood markers, genes or microbiome. This is what this page examines. The supplement side is covered on Personalized Supplement Packages and Supplement Algorithms and Personalized Packs.

What studies of personalized advice found

• Dietary intake improves modestly. In Food4Me (1,269 completers across Europe), personalized advice reduced red meat, salt and saturated fat, raised folate intake by 29.6 micrograms, and gave slightly higher Healthy Eating Index scores than conventional advice at six months. [2] Those are intake changes, not health outcomes.
• Extra biological data did not add benefit. In the same trial, there was no evidence that including blood-marker or genetic information enhanced effectiveness. [2]
• A systematic review of 11 randomized trials (57 to 1,488 participants, 1 to 12 months) found dietary intake improved more with personalized than generalized advice, rated risk of bias as low, and asked for better trials comparing diet-based, biological and lifestyle personalization. [3]
• A biomarker-and-genetics trial of weight loss. Personalized plans did not beat a generic healthy diet for fat mass over 10 weeks. [4]

Label: promising but limited for improving dietary intake with personalized advice; insufficient evidence that personalized nutrient amounts improve disease outcomes. Proper evidence not found, in the sources read, for trials showing that individually computed vitamin or mineral amounts beat standard guidance on clinical outcomes.

Problems with the inputs

• Blood markers can be hard to interpret. Inflammation lowers serum retinol, because its carrier protein falls during infection and inflammation. [5] See Blood Biomarkers as a Nutrition Input.
• Reference ranges can vary between labs. [6]
• Microbiome results vary by lab methods. [7] See Microbiome Data as a Nutrition Input.
• Genetic inputs are covered in Genetics as a Nutrition Input.