CAN FOOD ACT AS MEDICINE?
The famous Greek physician Hippocrates once said: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”. It is hard to believe that he lived in 400 BC. Today, venture capitalists as well as large corporations are investing heavily in the area of food for medicine, with the hope that personalized nutrition will cut diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular risk and even reduce the rate of cancer. The industry is surely in its infancy, but it bears the promise of radically impacting our health as well as improving the environment.
The time for food pyramids recommending the consumption of certain amount of oils, vegetables or meats are long behind us. We are now entering an era where we can measure how each body reacts differently to the same foods. A perfectly healthy meal for one may put another person on a fast track to obesity and heart disease. The crucial discovery in precision nutrition is the role of microbiome. These are the colony of 100trn microbes living in the human gut. Microbiome is the factory that converts food into the various substances the body needs to function or cause poor health. And now we know that everybody’s microbiome is unique.
The players in the food for medicine industry vary in scope and technology. Many just do the basic genetic testing, trying to find a handful of genes linked with certain food reactions. Some others try to map our microbiome through genomic analysis of everything in a person’s stool sample. Still others combine continuous monitoring devices to track blood levels, lipid, glucose, vitamins and so on. The 2015 study by the researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Israel spearheaded a whole group of companies using AI to predict an individual’s response to any given food- measured by continuous blood glucose monitoring. The algorithm also uses lifestyle, medical background and the composition of the microbiome.
As exciting as these technologies are, they all have limited utility and are predominately embraced by affluent early adaptors. Yet, some of the technologies that are still in the “labs”- such as implants and cheap wearable devices could reset the industry in the next 5–10 years. That will requires a whole ecosystem of players working together to make food for medicine a reality. These include app developers, device makers, labs, farmacies and providers. Payers’ as well as governments’ willingness to reimburse and fund research for these technologies would also go a long way to supercharge the industry. The company that can successfully weave these constituents together with the science at its core, will be the winner-take-all. Thankfully, a brave few are already trying but only a handful of investors in this sector will hear Kaching at the cash register.
