Assessing dietary intake is critical for understanding the relationship between diet and health. Fatty acid blood biomarkers have been particularly useful in determining dietary intakes and assessing the risk of chronic disease. However, fatty acid analysis involves the removal of fatty acids from their complex lipid structures resulting in a loss of potentially useful biological information. "Lipidomics" involves the use of mass spectrometry to identify lipids in their native form. Lipidomic approaches present challenges as an alternative to fatty acid analysis. This includes different types of lipidomic approaches and a lack of consensus on the lipids reported in different studies. Distinguishing between macrolipidomic approaches to characterize highly abundant lipids and microlipidomic approaches examining low abundant bioactive lipids and the use of brutto, medio, genio, and infinio to describe the level of information of lipidomic data can provide clarity to the field. Using lipidomic measurements for understanding docosahexaenoic acid metabolism during pregnancy will also be examined.
Keywords: biomarkers; dietary intake; fatty acids; lipidomics; omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids.