Should You Have Genetic Testing Done Before Starting A Diet? Here’s What We Know – Health Digest

There are health professionals who are concerned about the lack of substantial data to support the definite premise that genetic testing can be your miracle answer when it comes to a successful diet plan, mainly because the research on nutrigenetics is still in its infancy. As explained by adjunct professor of nutrition in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s nutrition department, Dr. Lu Qi (via TODAY), while the goal of genetic testing to come up with personalized diet plans is promising, it’s too early to be making recommendations.

One of the larger studies that critics of DNA-based diets widely cite is a 2018 study published in JAMA Network that involved 609 overweight adults, aged 18 to 50, who went on either a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet for 12 months (via STAT News). After the year was up, researchers not only found that there was a negligible difference in the fat loss between the two groups (the low-fat group had 11.7 pounds of weight loss and the low-carb dieters had 13.2 pounds of weight loss), but that their DNA genotypes (low-carb genotype vs low-fat genotype) had no influence on the results. 

This is not to say that your genes don’t play a part in weight loss. It’s just that there isn’t enough to go on based on large-scale randomized controlled trials, shared Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, pediatrician and author of “The Bad Food Bible” (via The Doctors). What does this mean for starting a diet plan?