The fascinating area of Nutrigenomics describes this daily communication between diet food and
nutrients their metabolites and our genome. This book describes how nutrition shapes human
evolution and demonstrates its consequences for our susceptibility to diseases such as
diabetes and atherosclerosis. Inappropriate diet can yield stress for our cells tissues and
organs and then it is often associated with low-grade chronic inflammation. Overnutrition
paired with physical inactivity leads to overweight and obesity and results in increased burden
for a body that originally was adapted for a life in the savannas of East Africa. Therefore
this textbook does not discuss a theoretical topic in science but it talks about real life
and our life-long chat with diet. We are all food consumers thus each of us is concerned by
the topic of this book and should be aware of its mechanisms.The purpose of this book is to
provide an overview on the principles of nutrigenomics and their relation to health or disease.
We are not aiming to compete with more comprehensive textbooks on molecular nutrition
evolutionary biology genomics gene regulation or metabolic diseases but rather will focus on
the essentials and will combine in a compact form elements from different disciplines. In
order to facilitate the latter we favor a high figure-to-text ratio following the rule a
picture tells more than thousand words.The content of this book is based on the lecture course
Nutrigenomics which is held since 2003 once per year by Prof. Carlberg at the University of
Eastern Finland in Kuopio. The book is subdivided into three sections and twelve chapters.
Following the Introduction there are sections on the Molecular genetic basis and the Links to
disease which take a view on nutrigenomics from the perspective of molecular mechanisms or
from the causes of metabolic diseases respectively.Besides its value as a textbook
Nutrigenomics will be a usefull reference for individuals working in biomedicine.
