If you are not strictly following the dietary recommendations advised by your doctor, you may no longer be able to fake it as researchers have found a way to measure adherence to diet from your blood sample.
It is possible to assess dietary compliance from a blood sample, showed the findings of the study conducted by Scandinavian researchers from various universities.
They were able to identify the study participants with the greatest apparent compliance to a healthy diet by testing for a set of diet-related biomarkers in the blood.
The study involved 154 participants who were advised to follow a healthy diet rich in berries, vegetables, fatty fish, canola oil and whole grains.
Several blood biomarkers were assessed to reflect the consumption of different key components of the diet.
These included serum alpha linoleic acid as a biomarker of canola oil consumption, plasma beta carotene as a biomarker for vegetable intake and plasma alkylresorcinols reflecting whole grain consumption.
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"When investigating the health effects of whole diets, it is useful to measure multiple biomarkers reflecting the intake of different components of the diet," researchers said.
This way of assessing compliance may help to better detect changes in risk factors.
The universities of Uppsala, Aarhus, Copenhagen, Eastern Finland, Iceland, Lund, Oulu, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, as well as Kuopio and Oulu University hospitals in Finland participated in the study that appeared in the Journal of Nutrition.