A journey to explore the health properties of traditional Korean diet: a commentary

Abstract

Abstract Modern food consumption in Korea has been modified to the Western style in parallel with the rapid globalization and economic growth, which might be a cause of skyrocketing increase of cardiometabolic disorders such as obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, hypertension, coronary artery disease, metabolic syndrome, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This is not a Korea-specific phenomenon but also a worldwide common public health problem. A plausible mechanism underlying the unhealthy changes could be genetics, especially metabolic genes that cannot adequately respond to the fast dietary changes and are unable to deal with the high intake of animal fat and calorie. If this is true, then the following questions are raised: (1) do we need to go back to the traditional K-diet (K-diet) to reduce the development of these unhealthy cardiometabolic disorders?, (2) if so, what could be the underlying mechanism by which K-diet may convey those health effects?, and (3) if the K-diet is not sufficient enough to solve the current problem, how can we modify the K-diet to fit our purposes?

Keywords

• Korean diet
• Carbohydrate metabolism
• Lipid metabolism
• Metabolomics
• Urine organic acid
• Inflammation