Nutritional toxicology: basic principles and actual problems.

Nutritional toxicology is a specialty that combines the backgrounds and research approaches of nutrition and toxicology. Many problems of substantial importance to health and food safety involve interactions of nutrition process and requirement with the effects of toxicological impact. Solution of these problems requires research that meets the procedural and design criteria of experimental nutrition and these of experimental toxicology. The relationships may be described in three basic categories: (1) influence of nutrition on toxicities; (2) influence of toxicants on nutrition; and (3) toxicities of nutrients. Trypsin inhibitor research, an example of diet impacting on toxicological response, illustrates the necessity of controlling nutritional composition aspects that can confound the results. Prolonged acetaminophen administration provides an example of the effects of toxicants on nutritional requirement and function which could be important for persons with marginal sulphur amino acid intake.