The importance of helping people find healthy and do-able eating plans that last a lifetime, not just a diet, is something all of us in my area of interest realize.

Over the last 40 years, one thing several health care providers have been doing is obtaining a food diary or history. The goal is to determine what has been done and what direction, moving forward, can be taken.

Unfortunately, these are notably inaccurate, as writing down what you eat takes a lot of time and remembering what you ate three days ago does not work very well.

In a recent issue of Nature Biotechnology, an international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California San Diego, report a new method called untargeted metabolomics to identify molecules derived from foods that were previously unidentified, but that appear in our blood and our stool.

The ability to appreciate how what we eat translates into products and by-products of metabolism has direct implications for our health. This technology can be used to obtain diet information empirically and understand relationships to health and disease.

Metabolomics (or the products of metabolism) involves the comprehensive measurement of all metabolites in a biological specimen. Metabolites are the substances made or used when an organism breaks down food, drugs, chemicals or its own tissues. This has huge implications not only in terms of diet, but also in exposure to chemicals, medications, beauty products such as lipstick, etc. Understanding this, metabolomics will eventually lead to better understanding the effects of our environment and exposures to our health.

Until this technology becomes more readily available, it is still a good idea to do your best to optimize your environment and what crosses your lips. We do not need a fancy test to tell us that a Twinkie or soda pop might not have the beneficial metabolites and products of cell metabolism as that of an apple and a carrot.

Dr. Warren Willey is a Pocatello physician. Visit his website at drwilley.com.