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Teaching Nutritional Genomics? Here are some Resources!

The Dietitians of Canada's Practice-Based Evidence in Nutrition recently posted a blog titled "Nutritional Genomics in the Dietetics Curriculum - How Far Have We Come?". The post summed up some recent research suggesting that dietetics professionals and students don't feel confident that they have a strong knowledge base regarding nutritional genomics, but are eager to learn more! This finding comes at a time when the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics' Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics has released their draft Future Education Model Accreditation Standards, highlighting the need for an understanding of the basic concepts of nutritional genomics. As the field moves forward and needs to teach nutritional genomics/critically evaluate the field, it's important to have relevant resources to understand the basics. Below are a few resources which might help! If you have any questions about nutritional genomics or topics in molecular nutrition, feel free to contact me in the comments or on twitter (@nutrevolve) and I'd be happy to chat further! This list will likely evolve (but hopefully stay concise!)


The American Heart Association recently released a scientific statement of nutritional genomics:
http://circgenetics.ahajournals.org/content/early/2016/04/19/HCG.0000000000000030

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has a practice paper on the topic:
http://www.eatrightpro.org/resource/practice/position-and-practice-papers/position-papers/nutritional-genomics

Wiley offers access to a popular textbook, Nutritional Genomics: Discovering the Path to Personalized Nutrition here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.proxy.library.cornell.edu/book/10.1002/0471781797

A series from Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science has one of the best series on the topic titled 'Recent Advances in Nutrigenetics and Nutrigenomics':
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/bookseries/18771173/108

The journal 'Frontiers' has a subsection for Nutrigenomics with a number of useful articles:
http://journal.frontiersin.org/journal/all/section/nutrigenomics

 The first four chapters of the textbook, 'Present Knowledge in Nutrition', have a nice introduction to systems biology, -omics technologies, and the study of nutrition:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781119946045

For any who like media or take a flipped classroom approach, Steven Zeisel, MD, PhD gave a great talk on the topic for ILSI North America:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKEYWhpEQVU

In addition to Dr. Zeisel's talk, I curate a playlist of videos on youtube related to molecular metabolism that have a number of topics related to the field that may also be great for flipped classroom discussions:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBKzfLstm42f5MoxdNJ8pSKoSKxf0ZbWT

When delving into this topic, it's important to check enthusiasm with discussions about the levels of evidence utilized in the field, the limitations of nutritional genomics, and ethical considerations that the field opens up - below are a few articles that are a bit more critical:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3689893/

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-nutrition-society/article/promoting-healthy-dietary-behaviour-through-personalised-nutrition-technology-push-or-technology-pull/B6E52E3943B7B6D58AD3BF9A945D83F9

http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i1102

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/171/11/1225

And lastly, a few organizations to be aware of:

The International Society of Nutrigenetics and Nutrigenomics

NuGo 

Food4Me Project

PennState's Center for Excellence in Nutrigenomics 

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