Nutrigenetics in practice: little is better than nothing

Nutrition is considered a major determinant influencing the health status of a person throughout life, and nutrigenetics is the science that studies how genetic variants can affect the individual capacity to metabolize nutrients. In this review, several examples are presented to demonstrate how nutrigenetics is a useful source of information from different nutritional perspectives, such as the metabolism of macronutrients, vitamins, minerals, and common foods. It is necessary to better define the context in which personal nutrition should be considered, with respect to personal genetics, to make the advice more clinic-oriented and disease-oriented. Finally, I discuss why it is important for specialists to emphasize personal nutrition, with the aim of improving the primary prevention of several chronic diseases.