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Your Body Speaks: The Science of Biomarkers

  • 5 days ago
  • 4 min read
Nutrition at Work: How What You Eat Shapes Your Biomarkers
Nutrition at Work: How What You Eat Shapes Your Biomarkers

Understanding what we eat is essential for good health, but accurately tracking dietary intake can be tricky. People may forget what they ate, underestimate portion sizes, or unintentionally misreport foods. This is where intake biomarkers come in. These are measurable substances in the body like compounds in blood or urine that give scientists and healthcare professionals objective clues about what we have eaten. By using biomarkers alongside traditional diet surveys, researchers can get a more accurate picture of nutrition, link diet to health outcomes, and help guide personalised nutrition advice.


Q1 . What does nutritional biomarker mean?

An intake biomarker is a measurable substance in your body (for example in blood, urine, or other fluids) that gives an objective clue about what you’ve eaten. For instance, after you eat a certain food or nutrient, your body may produce or clear away certain compounds scientists can measure those and link them to dietary intake [1,2].


Q2 . Why do these biomarkers matter for health and nutrition?

They matter because traditional methods of tracking diet (food diaries, questionnaires) rely on memory or honesty, which can lead to errors. Intake biomarkers offer a more objective way to check what someone has consumed. This helps identify if a person is eating too little or too much of particular nutrients, links diet to health outcomes (like diabetes or heart disease), and can help tailor nutrition advice more precisely [1,3].


Q3. How are these biomarkers measured in practice?

Typically, researchers or clinicians collect a biological sample (blood, urine, sometimes hair or fat tissue) and analyse it using techniques like mass spectrometry or chromatography. These tests detect and quantify specific molecules or metabolites linked to dietary intake. Proper lab methods, sample handling, and careful interpretation are essential [4,5].


Q4. What things can affect how accurate these biomarkers are?

Many factors can affect biomarker levels: age, sex, metabolism, genetics, medications, health conditions, how recent your meal was, what you ate before, sample collection and storage, and lifestyle factors like smoking or exercise. Because of this, interpreting biomarkers is more complex than just reading a single value [5,6].


Q5. Can biomarkers replace food diaries and diet questionnaires completely?

Not fully. Biomarkers are a powerful complement to self-reports, but they don’t yet capture everything. Some foods or nutrients have no reliable biomarker, biomarkers often reflect only recent intake, and the tests can be costly or technically complex. Ideally, biomarkers are used alongside questionnaires to get the best overall picture [1,7].


Q6. Are biomarkers available for all nutrients and foods?

No research has identified biomarkers for many foods, food groups, and nutrients, especially where intake is strongly linked to a measurable compound, but not for everything. Some nutrients or highly processed foods still lack reliable biomarkers [2,8].


Q7 . How can they be used in public health and research?

In public health, biomarkers allow better monitoring of population nutrient intake with less reliance on self-report. In research, they improve the accuracy of diet-disease studies, help validate dietary interventions, and may allow more personalized nutrition advice based on biomarker status [1,6].


Q8. What are the main limitations or challenges of using intake biomarkers?

Challenges include cost and technical complexity, short-term reflection of intake, incomplete coverage of all foods/nutrients, inter-individual variation, sample handling and storage requirements, and potential influence of non-dietary factors like metabolism or disease [5,2].


Q9. What are upcoming developments in this field?

The field is moving fast: omics approaches (metabolomics, lipidomics) are identifying many new candidate biomarkers, multi-biomarker panels are improving dietary assessment, wearable sensors and AI may integrate lifestyle and biomarker data, and cost/throughput are improving for more routine use [1,3,6].


Q10. What’s the bottom line?

Intake biomarkers are an important tool in nutrition science they provide a more objective way to assess what people eat, complement traditional methods, and help link diet to health outcomes more accurately. They are not perfect yet (not every food/nutrient has a biomarker, cost and complexity remain), but methodological improvements are expanding their usefulness [7,8,9].


References.

  1. Prentice RL. Intake biomarkers for nutrition and health: review and discussion of methodology issues. Metabolites. 2024;14(5):276. https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo14050276

  2. Landberg R, Karra P, Hoobler R, Loftfield E, Huybrechts I, Rattner JI, et al. Dietary biomarkers—an update on their validity and applicability in epidemiological studies. Nutr Rev. 2024;82(9):1260‑1280. https://doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nuad119

  3. Maruvada P, Lampe JW, Wishart DS, Barupal D, Chester DN, Dodd D, et al. Perspective: Dietary biomarkers of intake and exposure—exploration with omics approaches. Adv Nutr. 2020;11(2):200‑215. https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmz075

  4. Praticò G, Gao Q, Scalbert A, Vergères G, Kolehmainen M, Manach C, et al. Guidelines for Biomarker of Food Intake Reviews (BFIRev): how to conduct an extensive literature search for biomarker of food intake discovery. Genes Nutr. 2018;13:3. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12263‑018‑0592‑8

  5. Dragsted LO, Gao Q, Scalbert A, Vergères G, Kolehmainen M, Manach C, et al. Validation of biomarkers of food intake—critical assessment of candidate biomarkers. Genes Nutr. 2018;13:14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12263‑018‑0603‑9

  6. Vázquez‑Manjarrez N, Ulaszewska M, Garcia‑Aloy M, et al. Biomarkers of intake for tropical fruits. Genes Nutr. 2020;15:11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12263‑020‑00670‑4

  7. Perelman SA, Patel TS, Khoury MJ, et al. A scoping review of nutritional biomarkers associated with food security. Nutrients. 2023;15(16):3576. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15163576

  8. McNamara AE, Walton J, Flynn A, Nugent AP, McNulty BA, Brennan L. The potential of multi‑biomarker panels in nutrition research: total fruit intake as an example. Front Nutr. 2021;7:577720. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2020.577720

  9. “Exhaustive Search of Dietary Intake Biomarkers as Objective Tools for Personalized Nutrimetabolomics and Precision Nutrition Implementation.” Nutr Rev. 2024;83(5):925‑933. https://doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/7781440

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