Food Intake Biomarkers for Increasing the Efficiency of Dietary Pattern Assessment through the Use of Metabolomics: Unforeseen Research Requirements for Addressing Current Gaps

Abstract

Current research on nutritional sciences depends upon the precise measurement of food intake. Despite being the most widely used dietary measurement tools, self-reported surveys are not exempt from already recognized limitations.(1, 2) Low dietary assessment accuracy contributes to the inconsistency of results already observed in many instances when trying to understand the connections between diet and healthiness or disease risk, thereby weakening their potential translation to clinical and public health applications.(1) The drawbacks of conventional instruments have encouraged research on food intake biomarkers (FIBs) as a complementary or alternative measure of dietary intake, being one of the cornerstones of nutritional epidemiology.(1) FIBs are those food compounds or food-derived metabolites that allow for recent or average intakes of specific food groups, foods, or food components to be objectively and accurately measured in a biological specimen.(3) They are assumed to be a more accurate measurement of dietary exposure than self-reported consumption because they cover the bioavailability of dietary compounds and allow for the drawbacks of composition tables, portion estimation, and subjectivity, among other things, to be handled. However, there are still some gaps that have to be addressed for such biomarkers to reach their full potential for the community. These are related to their specificity, interindividual variation, validation, and quantification. These aspects will be outlined in the following paragraphs.