Leverage new technologies and data science
Exponential growth has occurred in technology, genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics platforms; personalized and environmental sensors; and other big-data resources. Yet, the implications of these advances for a new era of nutrition research have not been realized. Strategic planning across the federal government would help mobilize limited resources for maximizing this high-cost area of research. As one example, while diverse federal departments and agencies [e.g., NIH, USDA, DoD, FDA, National Science Foundation (NSF), VA] have expressed great interest in personalized or precision nutrition (234), inadequate funding and coordination have hampered the nation's ability to fully leverage and harness the potential of the powerful, expensive ’omics platforms and related data science advances to develop personalized recommendations (235). The untapped potential of new technology and data science approaches extends far beyond precision nutrition, with promise for additional basic, clinical, environmental, and public health research on food and nutrition (236).