The Poole Lab at Cornell University studies precision nutrition.

Understanding Precision Nutrition

Precision nutrition refers to the quest to determine dietary recommendations for each individual to help them live their best (healthiest) life. Over the years, nutritional scientists have observed that people react differently to the same food. For example, some people’s blood glucose will rise higher if they eat ice cream than if they eat bananas. Surprisingly, for other people, that may not be the case. Which category do you fit into? How do we determine that?

The Gut Microbiome

The reason precision nutrition exists, and furthermore, why one’s blood glucose rises higher than someone else’s when eating ice cream versus a banana, is believed to include genetics and gut microbiota. The gut microbiota is the collection of microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viruses) that live in the digestive tract. This has increasing important in research, as we define how the gut microbiota plays a role in one’s digestion, energy, immune defense, behavior, and metabolism. Understanding all of the factors that affect this variability will enable us to make personalized recommendations about what each person should eat to avoid developing conditions such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.

Our Goals

Our goal is to elucidate the interactions between host genetics, dietary intake, and gut microbes in order to benefit host health. Our research is interdisciplinary; we combine knowledge from genetics, nutrition, physiology, microbiology, and computational biology. Our findings could help to develop a systems biology approach to precision nutrition to assist in treating metabolic disorders or decreasing disease risk.