🎧 Foodomics with Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh
This is the first in a new special series produced in partnership with the Periodic Table of Food Initiative!
You might be asking, "What is 'foodomics"? Fundamentally, foodomics is the science dedicated to comprehensively studying what's in our food, from its genetic building blocks to its chemical composition.
Welcome to the inaugural episode of a special series on the Foodie Pharmacology podcast, produced in collaboration with The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI)! The PTFI is spearheading a global effort to decipher the makeup of foods, aiming to enhance both human and environmental health. Our guest today is Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh, a distinguished nutritional scientist and the Director of Programs and Partnerships at Verso Biosciences. Additionally, Tracy holds the position of Director of Technology Partnerships at the PTFI. With over 15 years in product development and scientific communication, she has played pivotal roles at various life science corporations. In this episode, we delve into how foodomics is demystifying the composition of crucial foods, including tomatoes.
We address some important questions, such as:
What are challenges and opportunities for foodomics for advancing our understanding of food and health for people and the planet?
How does the multi-omics data that the PTFI is generating complement both existing food composition data - as well as existing foodomics efforts?
How do you envision the data being generated by the Periodic Table of Food Initiative to be utilized? What are your hopes?
What does a nourishing food system look like to you? What are you most hopeful about for the future of food?
This podcast is sponsored by The Periodic Table of Food Initiative in association with the American Heart Association. The views and opinions in this podcast are those of the presenters and represent the synthesis of science. For more information on the Periodic Table of Food Initiative, please visit their website.
We have a new feature now available for paid and founding subscribers! Access the full transcript of this Foodie Pharmacology episode at the bottom of this post.
About Tracy
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh is a nutritional scientist and the Director of Programs and Partnerships at Verso Biosciences. She serves as the Director of Technology Partnerships at the Periodic Table of Food Initiative, a global effort to utilize food composition data to transform human and planetary health. Dr. Shafizadeh has over 15 years of experience in product development and scientific communications, serving in leadership roles at numerous life science companies. Tracy received her PhD in nutritional biology from the University of California, Davis, studying infant nutrition and intestinal development in newborns.
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Yours in health, Dr. Quave
Here is the full transcript, available to Nature’s Pharmacy paid subscribers:
Dr. Cassandra Quave: Hello fellow Foodies and welcome back. This is Dr. Cassandra Quave and you're listening to Foodie Pharmacology, the Science podcast for the Food Curious. Today on the show we're going to dive into a topic that is known as Foodomics, and you may be wondering what that term means. Hold that thought. We're gonna dive really deep into it.
PTFI Initiative
Dr. Cassandra Quave: Before I begin though, I just want to give a shout out of thanks to the Periodic Table of Food Initiative and the American Heart Association, who are bringing this program to you today. For more information on the Periodic Table of Food initiative, please visit foodperiodictable.org.
Alright, Foodomics, what is it?
Our guest today is Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh. She is a nutritional scientist and the Director of Programs and Partnerships at Verso Biosciences. She serves as the Director of Technology Partnerships at the Periodic Table of Food Initiative, a global effort to utilize food composition data to transform. Human and planetary health. Dr. Shafizadeh has over 15 years of experience in product development and scientific communications serving in leadership roles at numerous life science companies. She received her PhD in Nutritional Biology from the University of California Davis, studying infant nutrition and intestinal development in newborns. Thanks so much for coming onto the show, Tracy.
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: Great to see you. Thanks for having me.
What Is Foodomics?
Dr. Cassandra Quave: Let's start with the elephant in the room. I'm sure many people are wondering what is Foodomics? That's probably a new term many of us have never heard before. Can you start us off there?
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: Sure. So Foodomics sounds like a mouthful, but it's the area of science where we're really trying to understand every single thing we can about what is in food. I think a lot of people have heard of the term genomics and they can conceptualize oh, we want to know everything about the genetic makeup of a human or any object. They're trying to understand better. Foodomics is, how can we understand all of the biomolecules and compositional elements of food beyond what we know traditionally or what most people think of as what we know about food.
What Is A Tomato?
Dr. Cassandra Quave: Incredible. So I know that recently you published a paper entitled What Is In a Tomato Mapping The Building Blocks of Food. So what is in a tomato and how did you use Foodomics to get to that answer?
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: Great question. So, the topic of Foodomics can be so complicated that what our goal was to be able to explain it to an audience of 11 to 13 year olds, how can we get our, fifth, sixth, seventh graders to understand what Foodomics is? How can we explain it in a way that's understandable and also exciting and make them want to learn more? So this paper that we published really took the idea of let's look deeply in a tomato and let's explain what's in a tomato to in a way that anyone could understand.
And so, what we used was an analogy of Legos, which most pre-teens can identify with. And to think about your final product when you build something out of Legos is very interesting and you can enjoy it. But really, you can look deeper and see that is actually made of many tiny pieces that have different shapes, different sizes, different colors, even different ways of moving that, that then finally result in this end product.
So, if you take that analogy and look at tomatoes on the outside, tomatoes look pretty similar to each other. Some are different shapes; some are a different color. But if you look deeply in a tomato, there are thousands of biomolecules that are in tomato that give it its shape, its color, its flavor, and provide nutrients.
And even unknown molecules that we don't even have names for yet are all contained within a tomato.
Using Legos to Communicate Science
Dr. Cassandra Quave: Incredible. So, it's really about the building blocks to food. Is that kind of how you would describe it to kids as a building block? I know omics can refer to many different types of measurements, whether it's genomics, proteomics lipid omics.
There are lots of different kinds of big data sets that get wrapped into food omics. So how do we communicate that to kids? I love the idea of using Legos as a start.
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: Yeah. So, what we talk about are the, in this paper are the things that would be naturally found in tomatoes. So, things that most of us have heard of macronutrients, like proteins, carbohydrates, fats.
They're definitely in a tomato. Then we have things like micronutrients. Also, things that most people have heard of minerals, vitamins, but there's a whole subset of compounds that are in all foods. But in tomato, in this example that we call secondary metabolites. So, these are what we would consider substrates, intermediates, and products of metabolism.
They don't necessarily fall into the traditional nutrients that we measure routinely on a nutrition label. These are things that are either produced by the plant when they have to because if you think about it, plants have to absorb nutrients, metabolize them, and utilize them just like we do.
And so, these are either upstream or downstream products of those traditional nutrients that we talk about. And the amazing and really. The exciting thing about secondary metabolites is we know the names of many of them. We don't know what they exactly do. We have hints. Some of them help promote health and fight off disease.
Some of these metabolites actually help the plant protect itself from predators. If you think about it, plants are not able to run away when there's a predator inside. They're rooted in the ground, so they need their own protective mechanisms to get pests not to want to eat them. So, some of these secondary metabolites turn away predators.
But there are also thousands of unknown molecules in food. We don't even know they exist, and we don't have a name for them. And these are the things that we are really excited about exploring in a simple tomato, for example.
The more we know about these biomolecules, the more, more we know about the shape and the charge and the mass, and we can then start to explore what do they do and what effect do they have on our health and on planetary health.
So that's really where we're excited to go.
Dr. Cassandra Quave: That's exciting. Yeah. Whenever I think of plant secondary metabolites, I guess the way I like to think of them is almost like the chemical language of plants. It's how they communicate with organisms in their environment. It's what gives 'em their flavor, their aroma, their color, all of those, all those amazing aspects.
And you're right, there's so much that we still don't know. Even about some of our most popular and widely sold vegetables. Yes. Yeah. So, I guess this leads into my next question and that's really about challenges and opportunities.
Foodomics Role
Dr. Cassandra Quave: Where do you see Foodomics and playing a role in advancing our understanding of food and health, both in terms of people, but also planetary health?
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: One thing about food is every single human on this planet has to eat. We eat usually multiple times per day, and we have many choices, at least in the US, about what we put in our mouth, what's in our diet. What we don't know is much about what is in those foods that we are eating every day, and there are very specific essential nutrients that have had decades upon decades of research done to know what are our basic nutrient requirements. There's been many careers worth of work to understand our basic nutrient requirements. Beyond that, though, I mean that the basic essential nutrients really are a handful of nutrients compared to everything that you can find in a food.
So, what Foodomics is trying to do is say, beyond our daily requirements, what are all of the other aspects of food? All the other biochemicals that are either helpful in making us the healthiest we can be, or detrimental. Maybe there are things in food that aren't naturally found there but are exogenous and they end up in our food supply. We need to know that.
We also need to know about all of the different functions of the biomolecules and food that we don't even understand yet or have a name for.
The other critical piece that Foodomics will allow us to do is. No two foods are the same. Every single food type, every different plant, every different animal-based food is different.
Compositionally from each other, wildly different. But what's even more interesting is even if you're comparing two tomatoes, there's many different varieties of tomatoes, they all have different composition, but then even two of the exact same variety of tomatoes grown in different environments will compositionally look very different.
So there's so much what we call metadata that is required to truly understand the full composition of a food. And all of that information goes toward understanding how it improves or takes away from our human health. And then if you also extend that to how food is grown, stored, shipped, processed, how it gets to us at the end of the day, all of that has an impact on planetary health.
And so we really look at it as food is at the center of many, if not most of the opportunities for us to improve both human and planetary health going forward.
Dr. Cassandra Quave: That's great. So well put, this brings to mind this question. I often pause it to my undergraduates that I teach and a course called Food Health and Society and I asked them, is a tomato really a tomato?
And how do we get to this question? The question really came about at the dinner table at my house, because, one of my kids, my, a teenage daughter hates tomatoes except when she's in Italy. She says, why do I only like tomatoes in Italy? You're getting them from grandpa's garden where they're, grown to vine ripen and then harvested directly from the garden to your plate.
So, there's a very different flavor associated with that compared to a tomato that's grown on the other side of the world. Picked green, put into a container ship, shipped across by ocean or by plane or however they ship tomatoes and then gas to force it to look red and pretty. There: is that tomato, really a tomato.
And what I mean by that is, is the chemistry of these two the same? I would say no, just based on the flavor profile. Flavor is nothing but a reflection of chemistry. There's a very big difference in, in flavor between something that's picked and eaten locally versus something that's shipped across the globe.
Data and Food Nutrition
Dr. Cassandra Quave: I'm wondering, within your studies, have you learned any insights on that question? Are we actually getting. The health value that we think we're getting from some of these, this produce especially when it's being, shipped from so far away and picked to the state of immaturity.
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: That is one of the key questions we are trying to answer at the Periodic Table of Food Initiative, and that is how can we use data to understand food quality in a way that we maybe, glossed over or overlooked in the past. If you look at a nutrition label or a food composition table where it says, this is the breakdown of the nutrients in a tomato. How are we supposed to, as consumers understand the tomato we have on our plate versus the tomato that was used to generate those data? They could be significantly different in their composition, in their nutrient values and while we probably will never be able to have every single sample of every single food or fruit or vegetable out there analyzed, we want to be able to bring to light just how different varieties, different growing conditions, different storage conditions really do affect foods.
The idea is utilizing the technology that we are building at the periodic table of food initiative to apply to all of these types of research questions.
Are there differences between apple's grown under regenerative agriculture practices versus conventional practices, not only in flavor and shape and color, but also deep compositionally? Are they different? And can we then map that back to nutritional quality or food quality?
 This is a very lofty large, very long-term goal of being able to understand our food in a way that we can't even imagine right now using this technology. But we have to start somewhere. And we've started with a list of inspirational foods that we have created that represent foods from all over the world. And they include both staple crops, but also regional or even indigenous foods that aren't necessarily consumed very widely but are very traditional to a specific geography. And we're trying to work through those foods in a very systematic way to at least start our database with representation of foods from all over the world using the various technologies that we've been able to bring to the Periodic Table of Food Initiative so that we can get a much better snapshot of what is actually in foods.
How Food Transforms During Cooking
Dr. Cassandra Quave: That's incredible. It's so exciting too because, just if you're looking at the humble tomato, there, there are so many ways that we transform tomatoes in our cooking practices. Yes. I've looked at studies, for example on lycopene contents, and this is just looking at one metabolite, right?
 Lycopene is a kind of fat-soluble antioxidant molecule. And you can compare the levels of lycopene, for example, and tomato paste is much higher than a fresh tomato. There have been studies looking at this versus the sauce and whether it's cooked with different things in the sauce.
And then of course, when it's combined with fats as a fat-soluble molecule, you tend to have better absorption in the body. So, you start thinking about, metabolomics another part of the omics. How is this metabolized in the body? And how its preparation affects that metabolism and that uptake.
So it's it, on the surface it seems like a simple question, what's an tomato? But I think it, this is gonna really blow off the lid of helping us better understand all these dynamics in our foods and really question whether quality is as important as quantity. And I would argue it is, especially when it comes to nutritional profiles.
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: Yes. Absolutely. I would agree. I would agree that just in general, no matter what topic we're talking about, People are empowered to make more informed and better decisions about their lives, their health, the health of their environment, if they understand how to make those decisions. . And right now, if you think about the average consumer or even clinician, when they're trying to either give guidance around what to eat or make choices in the grocery store or at the farmer's market, we know so little about food and the differences between foods and what's in the food that we have to choose from.
If we can bring that knowledge and that information to the world, in a publicly available and accessible way I really do believe that all the way from consumers up to very specific research questions can be so much better informed and designed and better outcomes will be achieved.
Dr. Cassandra Quave: That's great.
The Goals of PTFI
Dr. Cassandra Quave: So I want to learn a little bit more about what the PTFI is doing in terms of what are its goals for advancing the frontiers of food, nutrition, and health. Like how does this, how does, how do these efforts actually, or how could they potentially influence, Access information, like you said, to clinicians, to consumers. What, where are they trying to go with this?
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: The Periodic Table of Food Initiative really is based on the premise that one, we know very little about the food we eat. Two, there are advanced analytical techniques that can allow us to understand in a more deep way what is in our food. And we want to make this publicly available, this information. So really to bring this information about what's in our food to everyone on the planet eventually that's our goal. So, what we're doing is three-pronged.
We are first trying to build the tools that allow for standardized analysis of food samples.
This is really tricky actually, because you mentioned metabolomics. We'll start there. That's one of the techniques that we use in the Foodomics field metabolomics is looking at all of these secondary metabolites that we're talking about and trying to not only identify them, name them, but quantify them to some degree in a sample, in this case, in food samples. But, If you look across various metabolomics labs, not only do they use different methods, they identify compounds in foods that they actually give different names to, even though it's the same, for instance, the same sample sent to two labs. And this makes it very difficult to combine data coming from different labs and be able to analyze things across different labs. Within labs, usually it's quite reproducible and you can look at studies across time but across labs, that's very hard. And so, because this is a global initiative, we really want labs around the world to be able to analyze foods from their region, rather than shipping all foods across the globe to one or two labs within the US or Europe. We want to enable labs around the world to be able to analyze their own foods. And so, we needed to standardize the technology in a way that allowed all Labs to use the same protocols, to have similar internal standards to be able to Harmonize the data across labs.
And so that's, that was one of the major pillars of the PTFI and we're still working on that. We have several platforms that are ready for distribution across labs. Some are still in development.
The second pillar is really around the data that we are trying to, as these labs are analyzing foods, we want them all to be able to submit or contribute to a centralized database that is publicly available so that as we continue to analyze foods over time, all of those data are in one central repository where anyone can be able to access that information.
And then the third piece really is around training. We want to enable farmers and people in the agricultural sector and also in the clinical sector and also consumers. How can we help them understand what these data mean? How can we provide them with tools to be able to interpret the data? And then how can they go on then to make better decisions either for themselves, their families, or in a clinical setting or even in an agricultural setting that could actually change the food system from the bottom up.
Dr. Cassandra Quave: It sounds like you've got a lot of research capacity building initiatives, embedded within this this pipeline, this innovation pipeline. And I think that's what you're speaking to of really, reinforcing this concept of analyzing these products across the globe and not just at one centralized lab is key, to make this as a scalable project. That's really exciting.
Food Composition Tables
Dr. Cassandra Quave: One other question I had is, so you're generating this multi omics data following a standard protocol, kinda a data pipeline, data acquisition pipeline and distribution pipeline. How does this new data integrate with existing information that's already out there in the literature on food composition? Are there ways to integrate these kind of cutting edge, tools with what's already out there in terms of basic composition data?
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: That's a really important question because there are, as I mentioned, decades of efforts and work to create what we call food composition tables.
Many countries have their own food composition tables, and they provide nutrient information about the foods in, in their area. These tend to be focused on . Essential nutrients and both at the macronutrient and micronutrient levels. And that's what we would consider. If we think about the levels of data that we can generate on a food, those tend to be the inner most critical kind of basic circles of food, if you think about it in that way.
 And once we know the macronutrient composition and then the micronutrient composition as it relates to basic nutrients, If you think about what would the next ring of information that you could know about a food be? And so let's just take the fat composition of a food, for instance, total fat content in a food is usually what you will find on a nutrition label. that would be considered one of the macronutrient values that, that are provided.
The next ring out would be what kinds of fats are there? What are the major categories of fats? And that's often now also shown on a nutrient label. So it's things like total saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat. Even trans fats now are listed on nutrient labels.
You can even click through even farther . If you think about the next concentric ring in this model we're building, you can look at in, within each of those categories, what are the individual fatty acids that are making up those classes or categories of fats, and how are they housed in the food or in the body. Are they in triglyceride form or there's three fatty acids attached to a glycerol backbone? Are they in a phospholipid form or there's a head group and several fatty acids attached. Those differences in structure then indicate the function of those very specific fats in the body or in the fruit or the food that you're analyzing.
So, the more deeply we can look at the composition of foods, the more we can eventually understand the function of all of those molecules. So we're building upon what we would call traditional nutrient analysis of foods. That's critical that we have that information and we are building out beyond that to expand or augment what we already know about foods by applying these Foodomics technologies.
Food App Possibilities
Dr. Cassandra Quave: That's really cool. As you're speaking, I was envisioning how this could be translated into the next food app, right? How amazing would that be? If at the palm of my hand, I could basically get an idea of what goes into my salad or another dish. Is that the idea? Does PTFI have a goal of something like that. Something like an app down the road or something that brings this very complex science to nutritionist or to dieticians where you can really prescribe a much more tailored diet to fit people's needs.
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: That is one way that we envision these data being applied. . But I think our goal as an initiative is really to be an enabling platform, okay. That brings the data to the world's scientists, clinicians, consumers, farmers, so that those experts in their fields will be able to utilize the data and apply them to either answering tough research questions to being able to better serve their patients, to be able to better make choices for their families.
So, we are not setting out to answer all of those questions or develop all of the tools that can be applications of the data. We are really intending to bring the data to the world in a high quality, very standardized way, and a very democratized way. We don't want this to be only available to people in certain parts of the world. We want this to be a globally available resource and enabling platform so that truly the experts in each of those spaces can then utilize the data to go on and find those solutions to the tough problems we have in this world.
Dr. Cassandra Quave: I think that's great, especially when we think about, the challenges with climate change and selection of different crops.
It would be incredibly useful to know, not only which crops are more resilient to different threats of drought or over too much rain or pest, et cetera, but also which crops might yield the most macro and micronutrient value for consumers. Now, I know your background is also in science communication, and we mentioned this earlier this project of getting into what's in a tomato.
The Importance of Food Education
Dr. Cassandra Quave: Why do you think it's important to communicate this to youth? Should we focus also on adults? Like where are things going in terms of science, communication with the project?
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: I think the majority of team members at the PTFI are very well versed in publishing and peer reviewed journals. That's where, we grew up in our careers doing that. We know how to write a scientific paper for a research audience. That is such a fraction of who we're trying to reach, that we really wanted to attempt to distill down the concepts enough to be able to grab the attention and inform a preteen audience.
It was a challenge. It was such a challenge. This paper was one of the harder papers that we have had to write as a group of scientists, because you can't rely on the technical language to do the explanation for you. You really have to come up with analogies and real-world examples to make sure that it's understandable.
Of course, we want to reach a very wide audience. We want to reach scientists and researchers. We also want to reach clinicians and dieticians who are on the ground trying to use nutrition to help better care for their patients. But farmers and people in agriculture that are having to make decisions on what to plant and how to best meet their own needs from an agricultural perspective, they can't necessarily make sense of a huge data base of metabolomics data that they've never interacted with in the past. So, there's no utility there for them. And so for us one of the challenges is not just explaining the data, but generating visualization tools that are unique and useful for different audiences.
Someone who is a metabolomics researcher wants to be able to query the data in a way that gives them the output that's meaningful to them. But someone who's trying to design a diet in a clinical setting needs a very different way of looking at the same data. And not just the communication piece, but also developing and, providing visualization tools to be able to ask questions of this database that we're generating in a way that, that the output is useful for the end user.
So those are some of the challenges we're working through now.
Future Hopes For Data
Dr. Cassandra Quave: That's incredible. Yeah. I like the idea of visualization, how you translate. For the listeners out there, these kinds of omics data, you're talking about, just very high memory very large file sizes of lots and lots of numeric data that refer to different chemicals and chemical networks. So it, it is difficult to sort through that visualization's gonna be key. It's gonna be really important there. So, when it comes to, let's say once you have this visualization tool in hand, what are your hopes for future users of this? Once we have these kind of tools there where it's more accessible to your farmers, to your chefs, to your dieticians, to your consumers, et cetera.
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: I think the end goal really is to be able to make more informed decisions about the food we grow, eat and serve no matter where you are on that continuum. In the entire food system, no matter which part you play, where the stakeholders lie across that continuum. Better understanding the differences among foods will allow every user or every stakeholder to be able to make more informed decisions.
I would say most people would like to do a better job of eating a diet that's both healthier for them and also making choices that are healthier for the planet. Most people will say that they would agree with that being a goal. How to get there, how to do that is so difficult.
I will admit my PhD is in nutrition, I still find myself glossing over at the grocery store sometimes, and basically choosing either the brand I've seen before or whatever's on sale and not making truly an informed decision about what I'm choosing to put in my cart and bring home and serve to my family. Despite the fact that I know better.
 But if the data were available in a way that meant something to me, whether I had my mom hat, my nutritional science hat or whatever on, I think we could all make better choices and we would feel empowered to take more accountability for the role of food in our health and in our planet's health.
Right now, we're like hands off a little bit like I don't really know how to make better decisions, so someone else maybe a scientist will be able to make a better decision about what we do, and they will let us know. I would like us to be able to make those decisions for ourselves because we have access and understanding of the data around food composition.
Dr. Cassandra Quave: No, that's great. It is difficult to go to a general, grocery store in the United States, for example. Everyone says stay in the perimeter. avoid the aisles. I think what we're learning from these types of analyses is that even in the perimeter, is a tomato or is this other food that you're eating, like where was it grown? Where does it come from? How long has it been sitting in storage? Is its health value still intact? Or are we getting a very watered-down version of what it potentially could be for our health? Those are tougher questions because we just don't have that data quite yet. And we certainly don't have labeling to say this version of this tomato is going to be healthier for you or not.
Buying Locally Grown Foods
Dr. Cassandra Quave: I suppose one thing people could do is to try and buy more local or in season produce, or to buy produce that's frozen, which is, flash frozen in its peak maturity. Do you have any other advice?
Knowing what you know about kind of Foodomics and your background in nutrition?
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: I would say that I am in a very unique and lucky spot to live in Northern California where we are in a very diverse agricultural area, and I do have local farms and I do have a list of farmer's markets that I get to choose to attend.
And so I have the opportunity to truly get to know our farmers that are growing the food that we're then putting on our plate. Even though I'm in that lucky position, ask me how many times I go to the grocery store versus how many times I make a special trip to the farmer's market. Yeah, it's tough. It's really tough to to fit that amount of effort and almost research into your daily life when you're busy and you have busy full-time schedules and you have children. So I would say thinking about learning what's in season in your area? Just learning about the area in which you live, thinking about what is in season, and then really trying to think, do I need blueberries in December that are from South America or wherever they have been flown in from. I want them because I like blueberries, but do I really need them? Or could I say, let's switch over and find something that's more seasonal in winter that's grown in my geography and see if I can get creative with that. So that's a small decision-making opportunity for anyone. Even if they don't know the difference of the composition, they know that food has been grown in their region in that season, and therefore the chances of it being higher quality food is probably higher and the carbon footprint of getting it to the store is also probably a better metric.
Dr. Cassandra Quave: That's right. Yeah. Because it's not just about human health, but also planetary health and how do we reduce those, that other impact. That's a great point. That's a great point. I look forward to the day when we can have some sort of AI, automated interpretation of foods we're in the store or at the, at our local markets.
It'd be great to have that information in an accessible way available to us all. And I think what PTFI is doing really right now is laying the groundwork for a deeper understanding of our foods.
PTFI and Foodomics
Dr. Cassandra Quave: So where is PTFI right now in this journey towards Foodomics and where is it headed?
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: The PTFI is right now working diligently on analyzing those inspirational foods that I mentioned before on the platforms that we have available to us. The data are not publicly available yet. We are really excited to having a proper global launch next year in the springtime. We don't know exactly when that will be.
But the idea is we would like to at least have a base number of foods that'll give an example of the ultimate goal of having the world's food supply represented in the PTFI, but we're starting with about 500 foods and we are really working toward looking with every tool we have, looking at the composition of these foods and bringing that to the public in the next nine months.
And we look forward to launching. We look forward to bringing attention to the initiative and getting not only the scientists involved with possibly onboarding the tools that we have developed and starting to analyze their own foods. But also getting the users of the database involved to start looking at the data, asking questions, and then we can't wait to see what applications result from that what types of apps will be developed what types of different ways of thinking about food quality and food composition and applied all across the food system spectrum. We can't wait to see where this leads.
Let Your Food Be your Medicine
Dr. Cassandra Quave: When I think about the role of food and health, the concept from Hippocratic Medicine comes up about, let your food be your medicine. So, this last question I have for you is, in your opinion, what does a nourishing food system look like and what are you most hopeful for in the future of food? I think we talk a lot about the challenges, the despair over climate change and some of the big agricultural challenges that we're currently facing, but there's also a lot to hope for. And so I'd love your take on that.
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: I think I am hopeful for the premise that we all want to do a better job of taking care of ourselves and taking care of our planet.
I really, I do believe at some core level, everyone wants to do a better job. The amount of energy, the amount of difficulty, that's what we're trying to bring down and make it accessible so that people don't shy away from really taking ownership of their role in in food and nutrition and health, and also the care and health of our planet. We want to bring everyone as close as possible to being intimately involved in the care of both of them, themselves and the planet.
So I'd really like to imagine a world where we are proactively making choices, and we are actors rather than reactors when it comes to really thinking about our role in human and planetary health, and I believe that bringing data in an accessible way to all stakeholders in the food system will, we will see improvements very quickly and we will see innovation and improvement long-term that we can't even imagine what that looks like yet. We're lighting the spark and I can't wait to see where that leads and where some of the innovations take us in a healthy food system.
Final Thoughts & Credits
Dr. Cassandra Quave: Amazing. Thank you so much, Tracy, for coming on the show. I learned a lot. I'm more hopeful and excited about some of these innovations and the exciting data that's going to be coming out soon with this program.
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh: Thank you so much for having me. And let's be on this journey together.
Dr. Cassandra Quave: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you listeners for tuning in and for tuning in each and every week. You can find this in our other episodes at the Foodie Pharmacology website. You can go to foodiepharmacology.com.
I want to remind you that the views and opinions in this podcast episode are those of the presenters and represent the synthesis of science. And this episode is brought to you by the Periodic Table of Food Initiative and the American Heart Association. Information on the Periodic Table of Food Initiative, please visit foodperiodictable.org.
I also want to thank our producers to Rob Cohen and Christine Roth for putting on the show. And again, you can find not only the episode recording of the show, but you can also find links to really fun merchandise and also the full video version, and of course, show notes associated with this recording.
Thanks so much for listening. Stay healthy out there and I'll see you next time.