My Prediction for 2022

This will be a short post as it is almost Christmas. I am going to make a prediction. Next year, our relationship with food will begin to change dramatically. What we will see will be an increased interest in precision. That includes precision medicine which will treat the individual, precision nutrition with individualized diets, precision agriculture that waters, fertilizes and provides pesticides per square yard if not by plant. Even recreation will be personalized in the metaverse. These changes in science will affect at least the following areas:

1.     Medicine – Our microbiome turns out to be much more important for illnesses and food plays a key role in the microbiome. We will no longer view randomized control trials (RCTs) as the gold standard as they only give population advice.

2.     Psychiatry – We are beginning to understand our microbiome affects our moods, our pain tolerance, our cognitive performance, our behavior, our appetite and, more generally, our mental health. We can expect to see personalized food recommendations for mental issues.

3.     Farming and fishing – Because we have a growing world population, environmental issues, and because we now know that nutrition should be individualized, how we produce food is beginning to change and will change dramatically in the coming years.

4.     Government and university research – Some conventional research on nutrition is likely to go away and be replaced by new areas which focus on the individual and their genetics and microbiome.

Traditionally, we have purchased and eaten food based on taste, price and convenience. That won’t go away soon but food will be produced and marketed in entirely different ways because of the enormous impact it makes on our health.

Happy Holidays everyone.