Many diseases and disorders are related to suboptimal nutrition in terms of deficits of essential nutrients, imbalance of macronutri-ents, or even toxic concentrations of certain food compounds. In their classic approach, nutrition scientists have dealt with this relation by studying the interaction of food and nutrition in human intervention studies and using biomarker approaches to determine the effect. Biochemical and molecular knowledge and technologies have gradually been integrated in explaining the observations made in these human studies and in underpinning postulated mechanisms by in vitro and animal research. On the other end, the biomedical research arena has unraveled a good number of mo-leculai "disease mechanisms," Currently, the two disciplines are well on their way to closely interact,Thus, we realize more and more that the nutiition and health relationship is solidly anchored in interactions on the levels of DNA, RNA, protein, and metabolites (Figure 1).
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