Development of a comprehensive food glycomic database and its application: Associations between dietary carbohydrates and insulin resistance

Carbohydrates are an integral part of a healthy diet. The molecular compositions of carbohydrates encompass a very broad range of unique structures with many being ill-defined. This vast structural complexity is distilled into vague categories such as total carbohydrates, sugars, starches, and soluble/insoluble fibers. Structural elucidation of the food glycome is until recently extremely slow and immensely challenging. Dietary carbohydrates, including monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, glycosidic linkages, and polysaccharides were determined for the most consumed foods in the US consisting of 250 common foods using a multiglycomic platform. The food glycome was then correlated with clinical data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) consisting of dietary recalls from 13,550 adults to determine associations between dietary carbohydrates, their structural features and insulin resistance. Several features were more powerful predictors compared to traditional measures indicating the need for molecular fine-scale food carbohydrate data in guiding precision nutrition initiatives and clinical studies. • Carbohydrates represent the most abundant biomolecules on Earth and are critical components of diet. • Despite their ubiquitous nature, they remain the “dark matter” of food. • We have constructed, for the first time, a comprehensive glycan database of food. • Access to quantitative and structural information of dietary glycans will aid clinical research into diet.