Principles and Guidelines for the Practice of Precision Nutrition in the Indian Context: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Precision and personalized nutrition represent a transformative shift in dietary recommendations, moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to a more individualized strategy that considers genetics, epigenetics, the microbiota, and socio-cultural, environmental, and lifestyle factors. As the field of precision medicine evolves, clear principles and guidelines are essential for its application in clinical and public health settings. In this narrative review we aimed to provide the current principles and guidelines governing personalized nutrition to establish a comprehensive and standardized framework for effective application and development of personalized nutrition strategies. In this review we also emphasized the importance of involving regional and cultural perspectives while formulating nutritional plans with a particular focus on individuals with an Indian background. A comprehensive search of key databases spanning the past two decades identified several core principles of precision nutrition and their integration with sociocultural factors. The guidelines emphasize interdisciplinary approaches and technological advancements like AI and big data and also point toward the applicability and generalizability of these approaches across cultures and populations, specifically Indian. However, the integration of multiple data sources and the requirement for uniform protocols are major challenges. Notwithstanding these challenges, the field of individualized nutrition has great promise for the future of nutrition. Future research should focus on refining these guidelines and addressing existing gaps to enhance their efficacy and applicability in real-world settings.

Keywords: epigenetics; metabolomics; microbiome; nutrigenomics; personalized nutrition; precision nutrition.