NEW YORK — Avoid fast food, eat vegetables and exercise. It sounds like generic health advice, but they’re tips supposedly tailored to my DNA profile.
Still, it’s tempting to think your DNA holds clues to your ideal diet. To see what my genes might reveal, I tried two services, 23andMe and DNAFit.If you pay $99 for a 23andMe ancestry report, you can spend $125 more for its health reports based on the same saliva sample. It turns out everyone gets the same 10 habits, since those are the ones 23andMe decided to survey people about. But the order in which they’re listed varies to indicate the magnitude of their supposed effect for you. Alisa Lehman, senior product scientist for 23andMe, said the top two habits for most people are limiting red meat and avoiding fast food, as they were for me.
DNAFit says its reports are based on the broader universe of scientific research about genes and diet.