Nutivõrk

Nutivõrk is a neologism used in Estonian nutrition discourse to describe a conceptual framework that maps the network of nutrients, bioactive compounds, foods and metabolic pathways that influence human nutrition. It treats diet as a complex system rather than as isolated nutrients.

In nutivõrk, nodes represent nutrients, foods, or bioactive compounds, while edges denote interactions such as synergistic effects, competition for absorption, or metabolic interdependencies. The structure can be considered at the level of an individual's diet or at a population level for public health analyses. Data sources include dietary intake records, metabolomics, microbiome profiles, and nutrigenomic information.

Methods from network science and systems biology are used to construct and analyze these networks. Common measures include centrality, clustering, and connectivity, which help identify key nutrients or food groups and how they influence overall dietary balance.

Applications include designing personalized nutrition plans that account for nutrient interdependencies, informing public health guidelines, and guiding the development of fortified foods and meal combinations that optimize nutrient availability.

Limitations include the complexity of biological systems, variability between individuals, and challenges in obtaining causal inferences from observational data. The concept remains a model to better understand how nutrients interact within meals, foods, and metabolic processes rather than a single metric of diet quality.