Metabolic profiles of male meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians, and vegans from the EPIC-Oxford cohort

Abstract

Background: Human metabolism is influenced by dietary factors and lifestyle, environmental, and genetic factors; thus, men who exclude some or all animal products from their diet might have different metabolic profiles than meat eaters.Objective: We aimed to investigate differences in concentrations of 118 circulating metabolites, including acylcarnitines, amino acids, biogenic amines, glycerophospholipids, hexose, and sphingolipids related to lipid, protein, and carbohydrate metabolism between male meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians, and vegans from the Oxford arm of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.Design: In this cross-sectional study, concentrations of metabolites were measured by mass spectrometry in plasma from 379 men categorized according to their diet group. Differences in mean metabolite concentrations across diet groups were tested by using ANOVA, and a false discovery rate–controlling procedure was used to account for multiple testing. Principal component analysis was used to investigate patterns in metabolic profiles.Results: Concentrations of 79% of metabolites differed significantly by diet group. In the vast majority of these cases, vegans had the lowest concentration, whereas meat eaters most often had the highest concentrations of the acylcarnitines, glycerophospholipids, and sphingolipids, and fish eaters or vegetarians most often had the highest concentrations of the amino acids and a biogenic amine. A clear separation between patterns in the metabolic profiles of the 4 diet groups was seen, with vegans being noticeably different from the other groups because of lower concentrations of some glycerophospholipids and sphingolipids.Conclusions: Metabolic profiles in plasma could effectively differentiate between men from different habitual diet groups, especially vegan men compared with men who consume animal products. The difference in metabolic profiles was mainly explained by the lower concentrations of glycerophospholipids and sphingolipids in vegans.

Metabolomic profiles as reliable biomarkers of dietary composition

“…Numerous studies have used metabolomics to characterize dietary intakes, although these have $1 limitations, such as crosssectional observational design subject to confounding by nondietary factors, lack of control groups, small sample size, use of a limited panel of metabolites, low resolution of profiling techniques, and data analysis based exclusively on clustering methods rather than single metabolites (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27). The aim of the present study was to conduct high-throughput metabolomics analysis of plasma samples from a carefully controlled crossover feeding study, unconfounded by weight loss, to determine whether a molecular "fingerprint" could distinguish individuals consuming 3 diets differing in macronutrient composition.…”

Flexitarian Diets and Health: A Review of the Evidence-Based Literature

“…For example, the recent European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition did not include SVDs when comparing the metabolic profile of meat eaters, vegetarians, and vegans (39). It is also worth pointing out that large dietary surveys, such as the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey, could look to include a definition and analysis of flexitarian or SVDs.…”

Identifying biomarkers of dietary patterns by using metabolomics

“…Furthermore, metabolomics can highlight the metabolites and metabolic pathways influenced by diet, which could be further assessed in prospective studies of disease outcomes with the use of mediation analysis to provide insights into the mechanisms that may be driving dietary pattern-disease relations. Although a number of small studies have evaluated individual food item associations with blood metabolite concentrations, to our knowledge, very few have evaluated dietary patterns, and, of these, most have used data-driven approaches with small samples (3,(29)(30)(31). Our 2 purposes were as follows: 1) to identify metabolites correlated with 4 dietary patterns and their components [with the HEI-2010, the Alternate Mediterranean Diet Score (aMED), the HDI, and the Baltic Sea Diet (BSD)], and 2) to gain insights into the potential biological mechanisms influenced by diet quality.…”