Study of the Potential of a Macronutrient Balanced Normocaloric Diet to Treat Lifestyle Diseases

The hypothesis of this proposal is that a carbohydrate-rich diet may cause a major deregulation of hormonal balance, causing both acute and chronic systemic inflammatory reactions mediated by white blood cells. We furthermore postulate that a carbohydrate-rich diet is a major risk factor in the development of obesity and life style diseases directly resulting from chronic systemic inflammation. We therefore want to use an integrated multidisciplinary systems biology approach to identify the hormones, genes and pathways specifically responding to a dietary carbohydrate reduction, to develop biomarkers that can be used for risk assessment, to identify molecular pathways and build mathematical models that describe the link between diet and inflammation, and use this knowledge to provide personalised dietary advice.