In years gone by, your business suits were tailored on Saville Row in London, your diamonds cut in Antwerp. Today, your mountain bike is built for your frame, the seat for your gender, your ski pants and jacket for the altitude or time of year. You can hire a personal chef to cater to your culinary preferences, but can they cook for your genotype? Is it feasible that the future of how you manage your health and choose your food will be determined by genetic tests that pinpoint risk and how to manage it?
At no time in the history of America has there been a more acute focus on health. Recent declarations by public health officials of an obesity crisis have spurred overwhelming interest in the management of disease, specifically obesity and its associated diseases (such as diabetes and heart disease). Dietary intervention and increasing physical activity are critical pivot points. The relationship between diet and disease is not new. Epidemiological analysis has provided the foundation for public health and dietary recommendations for the population at large. Recent developments in genetic research, and the particularly spectacular progress of the Human Genome Project, have revealed "one-size" dietary recommendations do not fit all, and that finely targeted approaches to disease prevention are in the wings.