Foodomics and the Periodic Table of Food Initiative
Sneak preview of an emerging research field
In October 2024, I attended the World Food Forum in Rome, which was a source of great inspiration for all things concerning science and food. Curiously, the topic that I subsequently followed up on with more reading and a recent webinar1 was one that I encountered during one of the breaks when I browsed through my Google “Food Systems” Alert email and found an article2 introducing the emerging field of foodomics. I thought this would be a good opportunity to try and introduce foodomics in a nutshell.
Foodomics takes its name from so-called “omics” disciplines. Think of genomics, for example. Genomics deals with molecules in DNA. There are six types of molecules in DNA with the most known ones being the four that we learned about in school: adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. But genomics isn’t so much interested in the individual molecules as it is in the entirety of DNA – the combination and complex entanglement of molecules and their meanings and emergent properties on larger scale. In that same sense, foodomics is not so much interested in individual nutrients as it is in the whole spectrum of nutrients, metabolites and bioactive compounds found in food, including what has been called the “dark matter of food”3.
From the perspective of foodomics, food contains macro- and micro nutrients in addition to primary and secondary metabolites such as isoflavanoids and bioactive compounds. You’ve all seen the nutrition labels on food packaging. They contain mostly macro- and micro nutrients – the carbohydrates, proteins, and fats on the one hand and the minerals and vitamins, on the other. However, according to some estimates4, up to 95% of biomolecules in food are unknown to science – hence, the moniker “dark matter”.
Now, while genomics basically deals with six types of molecules, foodomics deals with a myriad of difference molecules. Broccoli alone has over 900 biomolecules that it doesn’t share with other green vegetables5. This is where the Periodic Table of Food Initiative6 comes in. It is an international effort to characterize the molecules in our foods and understand their metabolic effects and associated implications for nutrition and health. Considering that diet-related diseases, many of which are also known as non-communicable diseases or short, NCDs, may actually be more accurately described as metabolic dysfunction7, understanding the ‘matter’ of food and its metabolic fate seem more important than ever. Foodomics and the Periodic Table of Food Initiative can thus be seen as the concerted development of “high-resolution” or “molecular” nutrition science. But it is also more than that, because food comes from somewhere. Before we eat it, it emerges somewhere. It grows, it lives, and it is part of a larger natural ecological metabolism.
While on the consumption side of food, the potential for preventing chronic metabolic diseases or dysfunction is of interest, on the production side of food, the logical question that arises is where all of our foods’ many types of molecules exactly come from or when and how exactly they are produced. In other words, what type of production systems produce exactly what type of macro- and micro-nutrients as well as primary and secondary metabolites? And what about the 95% of food’s dark matter? What determines that? How do the environmental factors implicated in the growth of vegetables, for example, determine the nature and abundance of metabolic biomolecules? A tomato from an industrial greenhouse might look identical to a tomato from a biodynamic garden if looked at from a macro perspective. It’s round. It’s red. It looks like a tomato. But what do we find if we increase the resolution and investigate the molecular nutrition by means of foodomics? Which metabolites are present and what are their individual and systemic effects on the human metabolism. And more importantly, how are they associated with beneficial and adverse health outcomes?
Foodomics and the Periodic Table of Food Initiative are thus part of an emerging inter-, multi-, and trans-disciplinary field that sets out to create a harmonized set of metrics and methods and a new lexicon for the molecular nutritional analysis of food. In addition, it seeks to integrate the different domains of food systems – from production to consumption to public health outcomes – and translate the emerging understanding across disciplines. From a food-systems perspective, foodomics can thus help us understand the effects of different production systems on our food’s nutritional values, while from a public health perspective, it can aid in characterizing and implementing dietary strategies that function as preventative health care. Finally, from the perspective of individual eaters and certain demographics, it can aid in addressing specific nutritional needs through tailored or precision nutrition. The possibilities this emerging field opens up are as plentiful as the challenges it is likely to face: certainly a field worth following or getting involved in.
E&OE
https://foodperiodictable.org/