Healthy Foods Depend On The Person

Universal diets don’t work because “healthy food” varies from person to person, a new study has found.

And so, the Weizmann Institute of Israel, has approved a study group of approximately 800 persons.

Each of the participants wore blood sugar monitors that tracked levels every five minutes over the span of a week. Additionally, the researchers gathered stool samples for analyzing the gut microbiome of the participants.

Participants ate one of four standardized breakfasts each day and wrote down the rest of what they ate.

WATCH: In the video above from the Weizmann Institute of Science, study authors Eran Segal and Eran Elinav explain how everyone responds to the same foods quite differently, and the microbiome.

For those keeping track of the many species researchers have flagged as possibly relevant to weight and blood sugar, the researchers found increases in Roseburia inulinivorans, Eubacterium eligens, Bacteroides vulgatus, Bacteroidetes phylum, and Alistipes putredinis in participants following the customized diets. Segal said: “We chose to focus on blood sugar because elevated levels are a major risk factor for diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome”. So what gives? How we metabolize healthy food can be very different from person to person, according to a new study, published in the journal Cell. The Israeli research teams have demonstrated that there exists a high degree of variability in the responses of different individuals to identical meals, and through the elegant application of machine learning have provided insight into the diverse factors underlying this variability.

While most dietary recommendations are based on universally applied grading systems, Segal said, “there are profound differences between individuals” that are often overlooked.

By conducting personalized dietary interventions with participants, the researchers were able to reduce post-meal blood sugar levels and alter gut flora, they said.

“With bread, a few people showed nearly no change in glucose, while others showed a large response”, he said.

Researchers believe their results are an indication that personalized nutrition is important.

The investigators also suggested that carefully tailoring diets to meet individuals’ blood sugar tendencies could be the wave of the future. He says there’s little practical takeaway for patients or health care providers, and questioned their decision to measure blood sugar levels after a meal, as measuring insulin levels after a meal is a more established way of determining whether people are developing insulin resistance that can lead to type 2 diabetes.

Blood glucose levels have been on the rise around the world, resulting in a number of the chronic lifestyle illnesses that now plague human society.

For decades, doctors and nutrition experts have used the glycemic index to help them rank foods based on how they affect blood sugar levels. They also served as self-subjects for the study.

Elinav’s research and Segal was financed by general academic grants and no commercial backing was received by them.

Sure, an ice cream sundae will probably cause your blood sugar levels to spike. An individual with high blood sugar levels should consume complex carbohydrates such as whole grains and brown rice, fruits and vegetables and stay away from refined sugar and food items made using white flour. The data showed different people had hugely different responses to the exact same food. They would like to come up with a service which creates personalized nutrition strategies for those who have pre-diabetes, diabetes, obesity and other health complications which are linked to nourishment.