Have you ever tried to become a vegetarian but found it difficult to quit eating meat? Your genes may be partly to blame, new research suggests.
of the study, A paper published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE identified a set of genes associated with people who adhered to a vegetarian diet for at least a year.
Nabeel Yaseen, the study’s lead author and professor emeritus of pathology at Northwestern University, said the findings may show that sticking to a vegetarian diet is not just a matter of willpower. .
“The important thing is that a vegetarian diet may or may not be suitable for you based on your genetics,” Yaseen said. “If you can’t keep doing this, don’t beat yourself up.”
The study compared the genetics of thousands of vegetarians and meat eaters who shared their medical and lifestyle data. UK Biobanka biomedical research database containing information from around 500,000 participants in the UK
The study analyzed data from approximately 5,300 vegetarians and 329,000 meat eaters and identified three genes significantly associated with vegetarian lifestyle choices. All three are located on chromosomes that have genes involved in brain function and lipid metabolism, the process by which fat is broken down for energy.
The results also pointed to 31 other genes associated with vegetarianism, albeit more weakly. Some of these genes are also involved in lipid metabolism.
“We hypothesize that the ability to adhere to a vegetarian diet may be related to how the body deals with fat and how it affects brain function.” Yaseen said.
However, he added that the study merely highlights a genetic link and does not claim that specific genes directly cause people to prefer a vegetarian diet. .
In the study, Yaseen and his team focused on people who are considered strict vegetarians, meaning they have not consumed animal meat or meat products for at least a year. They determined who was eligible based on his two questionnaires completed by participants for UK Biobank. The first, conducted four times between 2006 and 2019, asked participants to self-report whether they had eaten meat within the past year. The second, conducted five times between 2009 and 2012, asked people to record everything they ate in the past 24 hours.
The idea that our genes influence our dietary preferences is neither new nor surprising.a research has been published A study last year also found a link between people’s genes and the types of foods they like, and it has long been understood that there is a genetic link to aversion to certain foods. Ta.
For example, it’s fairly well known that some people have versions of the gene that: I hate coriander.
“The coriander gene is actually an olfactory receptor in the nose that binds to aromatic compounds in coriander,” says Joan Cole, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. . “Some people have a version of this gene that makes cilantro smell and taste like soap, so they tend to eat less cilantro.”
However, Yaseen said his findings are novel in that they establish a link between specific genes and vegetarianism.
In contrast, many past studies relied on twin comparisons to investigate the role that genetics plays in dietary preferences.
Dr. Laura Wesseldijk, lead author of one such twin study, said of her research: Published in January The researchers found that “70 to 80 percent of the individual variation in abstinence from beef, pork, chicken, and seafood may be due to genetics.”
But Wesseldijk, a behavioral geneticist at the University of Amsterdam Medical Center who was not involved in the study, pointed out that human traits are never determined solely by nature or upbringing. Rather, “everything is completely intertwined,” she says.
Wesseldijk added that a person’s upbringing and environment, as well as their religious and moral beliefs, health concerns and culture, play a big role when it comes to diet.
“Environment can completely cancel out anything that is highly heritable, and the same goes for vegetarianism,” she says.
Yaseen pointed out several important limitations of his study. One is that the study included only white people. Other ethnicities were excluded to ensure that genes that may be associated with a particular race were not incorrectly linked to being vegetarian, he said. Therefore, the study needs to be repeated with other groups to determine whether the findings apply more broadly.
Second, the study examined only a small portion of the human genome, leaving open the possibility that additional genes may also be associated with being vegetarian.
Yaseen said there are no immediate plans to conduct further research on this topic, but he hopes to see it in the future after more research is completed, when experts will be able to assess whether a vegetarian diet is suitable for health. He said he could imagine it. Individual based on DNA.
“Hopefully, we’ll know more and maybe be able to genetically test people and say, ‘This diet is good for you, or this diet is not good for you.’ . For example, more personalized meals. Dietary recommendations.”
