Type 2 diabetes and its complications increase the risk of disability and premature death and impose major costs on society. Dietary changes can often prevent the disease or reduce its consequences, but clinicians lack robust tools to decide when and how to intervene in individuals at high risk.

In this project, we combine standardized meal tests, short-term dietary trials, and large Nordic population cohorts with long-term registry follow-up to understand how specific dietary components influence diabetes risk through underlying metabolic processes. A key focus is to ensure that these findings are relevant across populations. We will therefore evaluate whether diet-related metabolic responses and biomarkers are consistent across groups with different genetic backgrounds and cultural contexts, including populations from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States. We will use this knowledge to develop a low-cost, blood-based biomarker test that helps clinicians select and monitor dietary interventions tailored to an individual’s metabolic profile. The aim is to improve metabolic flexibility and glucose control before diabetes develops, or to reduce disease severity once it occurs.

The long-term goal is to make precise, biomarker-guided dietary prevention and monitoring feasible in routine healthcare, enabling a shift from reactive treatment to proactive prevention of diabetes and its complications.