Molecularization in nutritional science: A view from philosophy of science

Schmeißer, Alexander; Döring, Frank

doi:10.1002/mnfr.201000078

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 133 publications

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“…The boundaries problem concerns the extent to which nutrition science is constrained by boundaries that limit the exchange of perspectives, theory, and techniques with other research fields and sectors, and between nutrition research and its translation into public health benefits (13,94,95). This is, by definition, not a problem that is unique to nutrition science, but part of broader discussions on the importance of interdisciplinary research (99) and "implementation science," a variant of interdisciplinarity that integrates research findings into health-care policy and practice (3).…”

Section: The Boundaries Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nutrition science has not fared as well with the rise over the second half the twentieth century of obesity and associated cardiometabolic disease (OACD), a syndrome in which excess body fat is associated with a state of chronic inflammation and increased cardiometabolic disease risk (61). Despite several decades of intensive research, empowered by substantial scientific and technological advances in the research tools available, including the rise of molecular biology (95), a recent comprehensive global survey concluded, "[O]besity has become a major global health challenge. Not only is obesity increasing, but no national success stories have been reported in the past 33 years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Nutritional Ecology and Human Health

2016

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In contrast to the spectacular advances in the first half of the twentieth century with micronutrient-related diseases, human nutrition science has failed to stem the more recent rise of obesity and associated cardiometabolic disease (OACD). This failure has triggered debate on the problems and limitations of the field and what change is needed to address these. We briefly review the two broad historical phases of human nutrition science and then provide an overview of the main problems that have been implicated in the poor progress of the field with solving OACD. We next introduce the field of nutritional ecology and show how its ecological-evolutionary foundations can enrich human nutrition science by providing the theory to help address its limitations. We end by introducing a modeling approach from nutritional ecology, termed nutritional geometry, and demonstrate how it can help to implement ecological and evolutionary theory in human nutrition to provide new direction and to better understand and manage OACD.

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Section: The Boundaries Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nutritional Ecology and Human Health

2016

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“…Personalized medicine, grounded in molecular biology, has been perceived as threatening public policy interventions and a more ecological representation of health by monopolizing attention and resources from a limited budget. As Duana Fullwiley mentions, “The danger of such a prospect potentially includes a biological reification of health disparities—allowing for an eclipse of the social, medical market and ecological determinants of disease that social science health researchers suspect are at issue.” Other limitations of a molecular approach have been discussed in the context of nutritional sciences, emphasizing the recognition that a mechanistic view of health and disease is too simplistic . Molecularization is thus a powerful trend shaping our biopolitical landscape, posing significant challenges to a balanced approach toward the management of health and disease.…”

Section: The Landscape Of Contemporary Biopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epigenetics in the Neoliberal “Regime of Truth”

Dupras¹,

Ravitsky²

2015

Hastings Center Report

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Recent findings in epigenetics have been attracting much attention from social scientists and bioethicists because they reveal the molecular mechanisms by which exposure to socioenvironmental factors, such as pollutants and social adversity, can influence the expression of genes throughout life. Most surprisingly, some epigenetic modifications may also be heritable via germ cells across generations. Epigenetics may be the missing molecular evidence of the importance of using preventive strategies at the policy level to reduce the incidence and prevalence of common diseases. But while this "policy translation" of epigenetics introduces new arguments in favor of public health strategies and policy-making, a more "clinical translation" of epigenetics is also emerging. It focuses on the biochemical mechanisms and epigenetic variants at the origin of disease, leading to novel biomedical means of assessing epigenetic susceptibility and reversing detrimental epigenetic variants. In this paper, we argue that the impetus to create new biomedical interventions to manipulate and reverse epigenetic variants is likely to garner more attention than effective social and public health interventions and therefore also to garner a greater share of limited public resources. This is likely to happen because of the current biopolitical context in which scientific findings are translated. This contemporary neoliberal "regime of truth," to use a term from Michel Foucault, greatly influences the ways in which knowledge is being interpreted and implemented. Building on sociologist Thomas Lemke's Foucauldian "analytics of biopolitics" and on literature from the field of science and technology studies, we present two sociological trends that may impede the policy translation of epigenetics: molecularization and biomedicalization. These trends, we argue, are likely to favor the clinical translation of epigenetics-in other words, the development of new clinical tools fostering what has been called "personalized" or "precision" medicine. In addition, we argue that an overemphasized clinical translation of epigenetics may further reinforce this biopolitical landscape through four processes closely related to neoliberal pathways of thinking: the internalization and isolation (aspects of liberal individualism) of socioenvironmental determinants of health and increased opportunities for commodification and technologicalization (aspects of economic liberalism) of health care interventions.

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“…For nutritional physiology (Fig. 1), a similar trend from a purely descriptive to mechanismic 1 -explanatory scientific discipline can be recognized (Strohle and Doring 2010). For example, in the stages of statics (''What is there?'')…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In addition, Nutriinformatics has a heuristic potential to foster rather applied disciplines. However, the scientific success of Nutriinformatics depends primarily on the formulation of unsolved fundamental and interesting questions, an inherent problem in nutrition science (Strohle and Doring 2010).…”

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confidence: 99%

Nutri-informatics: a new kid on the block?

Döring¹,

Rimbach²

2014

Genes Nutr

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From an epistemological point of view, nutritional physiology has been developed, like other factual sciences such as physics, from a purely descriptive to a mechanismic-explanatory scientific discipline. Nowadays, nutritional physiology has entered the molecular stage. Based on this micro-reductionism, molecular targets (e.g., transcription factors) of energy intake, certain nutrients (e.g., zinc) and selected plant bioactives (e.g., flavonoids) have been identified. Although these results are impressive, molecular approaches in nutritional physiology are limited by nature since the molecular targets of nutrients seem to have no ontic priority to understand the nutritional phenotype of an organism. Here we define, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time Nutri-informatics as a new bioinformatics discipline integrating large-scale data sets from nutritional studies into a stringent nutritional systems biology context. We suggest that Nutri-informatics, as an emerging field, may bridge the gap between nutritional biochemistry, nutritional physiology and metabolism to understand the interactions between an organism and its environment.Keywords Micro-reductionism Á Nutrigenomics Á Nutritional systems biology Á Nutri-informatics Based on a view from history of science, it is interesting to note that factual sciences such as physics, biology and psychology have developed through the stages of statics, kinematics and dynamics (Bunge 2004). For nutritional physiology (Fig. 1), a similar trend from a purely descriptive to mechanismic 1 -explanatory scientific discipline can be recognized (Strohle and Doring 2010). For example, in the stages of statics (''What is there?'') and kinematics (''How does it change?''), nutritional physiologists identified the essentials components of our diet and answered the question, how the status of nutrients may change as function of intake. On this basis, robust dietary recommendations were made for many nutrients. In the stage of dynamics (''Why does it change?''), the physiological and biochemical functions of the nutrients were unraveled. During the last two decades, nutritional physiology has entered a molecular stage (''What is the molecular mechanism?''). This kind of micro-reductionism has contributed to a deeper understanding of nutritional processes. For example, pioneering work on vitamin A as transcription factor ligands has been published for more than 20 years (Chambon 1996). More recently, by applying gene chip technology, we and others have identified molecular targets differentially regulated by dietary restriction (Giller et al. 2013), vitamins (Fischer et al. 2001, trace elements (Fischer et al. 2001;tom Dieck et al. 2003), and plant bioactives (Boomgaarden et al. 2010). Notably, dietary factors do not only regulate gene expression on the mRNA, but also on the micro-RNA level (Boesch-Saadatmandi et al. 2011;Gaedicke et al. 2008).

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Molecularization in nutritional science: A view from philosophy of science

Cited by 9 publications

References 133 publications

Nutritional Ecology and Human Health

Nutritional Ecology and Human Health

Epigenetics in the Neoliberal “Regime of Truth”

Nutri-informatics: a new kid on the block?

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