I’m an engineer who found health later in life. I read white papers and generally nerd out about understanding the details.
There are a tremendous amount of white papers / research papers out there that all seem to pick nuances and study them but their input doesn’t help general understanding.
In engineering, we build system models for every complex system and interaction. The human body is a complex system, where is the human bodies system model?
I’d even settle for the human bodies response to different dietary inputs and the bodies response to blood sugar, insulin, triglycerides etc.
Once there is a system model, you can make assertions, prove or disprove the assumptions in the system model and, if an outcome is unexpected, you test that specific condition.
I have had a similar desire, but I think it comes down to how different and complex of systems we are talking about modeling. Most (broad generalization, I know) man made machines are less complex than the human body, and easily modeled since humans designed the machine’s inner workings (ignoring machine learning, ect.), instead of trying to reverse engineer the gut.
We can use the research from the white papers to say nutrient x behaves this way in this environment, or vitamin y is absorbed by this pathway, but until we understand more about the neural pathways of the gut and their role in “the gut-brain axis, which consists of multiple connections, including the vagus nerve, the immune system, and bacterial metabolites and products.” - google. I think it would be hard to make a model of nutrition and digestion.
The number of variables needed to be controlled for in a life like nutrition/digestion model are mind boggling. That being said, I’m all for it! Where do I sign up.
Great question. I haven’t seen such a model. I think a good factor to consider would be oxidative metabolism. ie. does this food improve one’s ability to produce cellular energy? Does this food affect the metabolism in any negative ways? Is it net positive or negative?
I honestly think it’s impossible to do if you’re looking for something that can be used to model outcomes. Maybe for education at a conceptual level but not for modeling. We barely understand how nutrition interacts with the body at a mechanical or molecular level. We have end to end studies showing how nutrition helps but good luck modeling the actual interactions.
We can’t simulate even a single cell either.
The other day I was blown away by the fact that we still don’t understand the root causes of diabetes given how pervasive it is. Apparently there are many different theories competing for it and no one is an absolute winner.