Metabonomic approaches to nutrient metabolism and future molecular nutrition

• Metabonomics provides quantitative system readout of the nutritional phenotype.
• Metabonomic biomarkers of nutrition-related disease are being developed.
• Nutrient-system analysis enables stratified nutrient requirements to be determined.
• Metabonomics opens new frontiers for stratified molecular nutrition.

Metabonomics provides access to the environmental, diet, genetic and metagenetic integrative metabolic phenotype of individuals. Recent advances in spectroscopic and chromatographic techniques can capture metabolites and nutrients within a broad dynamic range. Applications to nutrition sciences have addressed nutrient metabolism and diet-related phenotypes under healthy and pathological conditions. Future molecular stratified nutrition requires development of comprehensive, quantitative profiling of nutrients to match the individual’s specific requirements and metabolic peculiarities (metabolic phenotype) to improve health and dietary management of medical conditions.