Local researchers gathering data to help create custom diets

Local researchers are gathering data that could help doctors create a first-of-its-kind algorithm to customize patients' diets based on their race, genetics and other factors.

Why it matters: More than half of American adults have at least one preventable chronic disease, which is often related to diet and exercise, according to the National Institutes of Health.

• But two individuals can react differently to the same diet and exercise regimen, and this study could give practitioners the tools to pinpoint why these differences occur and to whom.

Driving the news: The national Nutrition for Precision Health (NPH) project includes researchers from Northwestern, IIT and UChicago. It is funded by a $170 million federal grant.

• The research is part of the larger All of Us study, which is gathering health data from 1 million Americans to help create a more representative pool of data and accelerate research.

Zoom in: NPH researchers will follow 10,000 participants as they eat and report on their normal diets, while two other groups will be monitored under more specific diets.

• Within a few years, the data from all three groups will be merged, joined with genetic data and processed through machine learning to help create the algorithm.

What they're saying: "Right now there's piecemeal research on how our body reacts to food, and how our genetic makeup might impact that, but there hasn't been a study of this scale until now," Joyce Ho, principal investigator on the project for Northwestern University, tells Axios.

One neat thing: Ho says she's most excited about the study's potential to gather health and nutrition data from a wide range of racial and economic groups.

• "With this diverse database, I'm hopeful that the algorithms and the science that's generated will be more applicable to groups that have historically been underrepresented," she said.

The big picture: "We're going to find out not only about what people are eating and how they respond to it, but in the context of their whole medical history, their genetics and their socioeconomics," LSU Health New Orleans genetics professor Lucio Miele tells Axios New Orleans .

• "This will generate one of the richest databases on Earth of how people's diet interacts with their overall health and lifestyles."

What's next: Those who want to join the study can find registration information here .