Chemical Complexity of Food and Implications for Therapeutics

Poor nutrition is a leading cause of illness in the United States, contributes to more than half a million deaths each year and affects half of all American adults who have one or more preventable noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, cancer, and poor bone health. Beyond increasing the risk of disease, poor nutrition has broad societal effects, driving up health care costs and decreasing productivity, with expenditures for obesity alone reaching $173 billion annually. By contrast, adopting a healthy diet and lifestyle can significantly counteract even a strong genetic predisposition to coronary heart disease and reduce the relative risk by nearly 50%.