Research

Mixed

Dietary habits are the dominant factor explaining inter-individual variation in the plasma metabolome, accounting for more variance than genetics or the gut microbiome for the majority of metabolites.

Your diet has a significantly larger impact on your blood metabolite levels than your genetics or gut bacteria do for most metabolic markers. Focusing on food quality and specific food items (like coffee or fish) can directly alter your metabolic profile more effectively than trying to change your genetic makeup.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Inter-individual variations in 610 metabolites were mostly explained by diet, 85 were explained by the gut microbiome and 38 were explained by genetics... diet or the microbiome being particularly dominant.
Lianmin Chen et al. · Nature Medicine · 2022

Why this rating

Large cohort (n=1,368), extensive phenotyping, replication cohorts, and robust statistical methods (LASSO, MR).

Source

Influence of the microbiome, diet and genetics on inter-individual variation in the human plasma metabolome

Lianmin Chen et al. · Nature Medicine · 2022

DOI 10.1038/s41591-022-02014-8

cohort · n=1368Cited 303×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →