Abstract
Background: Nutritional effects cannot be explained by caloric or nutrient content alone. Physiological responses to food also depend on molecular and matrix structure, microbial transformation, quantity, timing, and the physiological state of the individual. Although these factors are increasingly recognized across nutrition science, an integrative framework linking them to individual adaptive capacity remains limited.
Objective: This article introduces nutritional compatibility within Lifestylopathy and proposes a systems-based framework for examining how dietary inputs interact with physiological state to influence biological benefit and adaptive demand.
Conceptual Framework: The Constitution–Configuration–Conformation Framework integrates established dimensions of molecular structure with food-matrix organization to describe how dietary architecture influences digestion, molecular recognition, nutrient accessibility, and microbial transformation. The gut microbiome serves as a metabolic interface between diet and the host, where certain dietary substrates are transformed into metabolites and signaling molecules that can influence host physiology. These processes are related to Adaptive Capacity, representing the organism’s functional ability to regulate, adjust, repair, and recover, and Adaptive Burden, representing demands placed on these functions. Potential Energy and Entropy Load provide the underlying thermodynamic perspective. Nutritional compatibility is further organized through four interacting dimensions—Quantity, Quality, Time, and Context. Building on these dimensions, this paper introduces the Net Adaptive Value model—a novel conceptual model developed within Lifestylopathy—to evaluate biological benefits relative to the physiological demands generated by food under prevailing individual conditions.
Conclusions: Nutritional compatibility is proposed as a relational and state-dependent property rather than an inherent characteristic of food. Net Adaptive Value and the associated framework are hypothesis-generating constructs rather than validated clinical measures. They provide a structured basis for investigating whether interactions among dietary architecture, microbial function, biological timing, physiological state, and Adaptive Capacity can advance personalized nutrition.