Maria Guarino and Marlene Lages were the guests of the Podcast IEJ – Educational Institute of Juncal, on World Food Day, October 16, to share their knowledge about metabolism, feeding and chrononutrition, and show how science can be applied to improving health and quality of life.

The podcast is an initiative of the IEJ Academy of Creative Writing, together with the 11th grade students of the Professional Course of Communication, Marketing, Public Relations and Advertising Technician and this episode entitled ‘How your body works’ allowed the dissemination of science within the school community, raising awareness about the topic and the importance of eating healthy, not only in younger age, but also in adults, since the researchers also guided a training session addressed to school teachers, called “Genes, Biological Clocks and Metabolic Disease”.

‘There are many diseases that are determined by genes, but epigenetics – the way the environment shapes our genes – will also determine many important issues of our health and disease,” says Maria Guarino, director of ciTechCare. Regardless of circadian rhythm, ‘genes-clocks’ have a crucial role, since they ‘compromise our activity during the day’.

Throughout the conversation some concepts of metabolismo and biological energy were clarified, highlighting how the presence of metabolic disease, which is, the inability to extract energy from food significantly affects the normal functioning of the human body.

Among the metabolic diseases with greater genetic predisposition, is type 2 diabetes. ‘Someone with type 2 diabetes will be 90% likely to pass this genetic load to their descendants’, explained Maria Guarino. However, ‘according to the choices we make throughout life, we can manage to struggle against. what genetics has left us’. 

Part of these choices, warns Marlene Lages, PhD research fellow in Food Consumption Sciences and Nutrition, is to maintain healthy and responsible eating habits, such as ‘avoiding the consumption of products with added sugars, avoid products that have an excessive saturated fat content and industrialized food, and not just processed food. For example, yogurt is a processed food, yet it can be part of a healthy diet’.

Aligned with the technological progress, and in order to move towards a more sustainable era – the age of health – both researchers suggest that the choices of each one should be informed and more responsible, thus promoting a higher quality of life, individual and collective.