Good diet may be vital to health – but it may not work for everyone, according to a major European study.
A "one size fits all" diet will not solve the problems of obesity and heart disease, researchers have concluded.
The five year study set out to study the impact of supposedly healthy and unhealthy diets on different people.
The most effective diet was low in fat but included fish oils. But many participants gained no benefit from it.
Some 500 volunteers, all of them obese, took part in the research.
Researchers said they had begun to identify the genes which determined whether an individual responded to a particular diet or not.
The fish diet was compared with a "Mediterranean" diet, high in fats such as olive oil, and with the traditional "unhealthy diet" packed with saturated, animal fats.
Researchers looked at the impact on the so-called metabolic syndrome – diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease caused by obesity.
Researcher Professor Helen Roche, of University College, Dublin, said: "But certain clusters of genes determined a volunteer’s responsiveness to dietary interventions. Some of the volunteers experienced obvious positive effects while others experienced little or no changes to the metabolic syndrome indicators."
She added: "If the results are confirmed by further studies, we will see the creation of more effective dietary treatments and nutritional therapies for obesity.
"Into the future, a GP is likely to take a blood sample from a patient to compare their genotype against genes active in common diseases and related this to the person’s lifestyle and environmental factors to gauge whether physical activity as opposed to nutritional regulation might work better for each individual patient.
"It may be like visiting a GP to be measured for a certain health fitting which has been proven to work for your genetic type – just as we visit tailors and dress makers for fitted suits and dresses that make us feel and look better."
Leave a Reply