‘Personalized nutrition?’ Check it out before you sign up

Have you heard of “personalized nutrition?”

It’s an approach to dietary advice that uses tests of a person’s genes, blood and other body fluids, and gastrointestinal tract, as well as questionnaires, to develop individualized nutritional recommendations.

Personalized nutrition’s global value was estimated at $12 billion in 2022, and it’s projected to be worth $50 billion by 2032. With about a dozen personalized nutrition companies in 2012, the industry grew to around 400 by 2021. 

The companies are making bold and possibly unsubstantiated claims, putting some consumers at financial, psychological, and physical risk, according to a new paper published Friday in the journal Health Affairs Scholar.

“Even as this field grows and unsupported claims proliferate, there is no regulatory framework specific to the rapidly emerging area of personalized nutrition,” said Peter G. Lurie, M.D., president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and Stephanie Rogus, the center’s former scientific integrity campaign manager, authors of the paper.

“Personalized nutrition touches on a number of regulatory areas within FDA including dietary supplements, health claims, diagnostics, and ‘wellness’ devices, but each of these areas is notable for either weak regulation or is actively under attack,” Laurie and Rogus said in a statement. 

They said this fragmented, weak regulatory environment has created a lack of regulation that may lead consumers to believe in nutrition approaches that exceed what the evidence supports. 

Lurie and Rogus recommend that the FDA acknowledge precision nutrition products as a category deserving regulatory attention and create a risk-based framework for assuring that the products’ benefits outweigh their risks. 

So, study personalized nutrition carefully before you sign up for expensive tests, diet plans, and supplements.