Personalized diets needed to combat obesity and diabetes

Segal said: “We chose to focus on blood sugar because elevated levels are a major risk factor for diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome”. They also noticed vastly different responses to the same food. Elinav and Segal say this proved to be a strong motivator, and participant meal reporting closely matched the biometric data obtained from their glucose monitors. After each meal the postprandial blood glucose levels were measured for each one of the participants. They ate a standardized breakfast each morning and entered all of their meals into the mobile app food diary.

Obesity may be misunderstood because of the very personal way we metabolise food, say scientists.

Tests indicated that different populations of gut bacteria were the key factor influencing post-meal blood sugar levels. Another participant saw to a similar upsurge after eating tomatoes.

Researchers found that two individuals could have widely varying blood sugar levels after eating the same food. “The same goes for any food that we provided”, Segal told reporters. I don’t care if kale is “healthier” than french fries – if it makes your blood sugar spike, it’s going to make you fatter (I suspect that this particular example is rarely, if ever, true however).

“This was true in the majority of people, but interestingly, not in all people”. It would seem that there actually is a connection between what we eat and how we eat it.

One middle-aged study participant with obesity and prediabetes told the authors she had tried other diets in the past and had failed.

While it’s unlikely that the new landscape of healthy eating will ever include Twinkies, the definition of “health food” is likely to become more nuanced. In study participant 445 (top), blood sugar levels rose sharply after eating bananas but not after cookies of the same amount of calories. The same happened with tomatoes and other foods considered healthy and included in the glycemic index as representative for a healthy diet.

“Our aim in this study was to find factors that underlie personalized blood glucose responses to food. We used that information to develop personal dietary recommendations that can help prevent and treat and diabetes”, Elinav said.

Dr Elinav added: “Measuring such a large cohort without any prejudice really enlightened us on how inaccurate we all were about one of the most basic concepts of our existence, which is what we eat and how we integrate nutrition into our daily life”.

“There are profound differences between individuals – in a few cases, individuals have opposite responses to one another – and this is really a big hole in the literature”, said Segal.

Mixes of microbes living in people’s guts, known as the gut microbiome, also changed with the good and bad diets. Bacteria help break down food and have been implicated in causing obesity and diabetes.

By making personalised alterations in diet tailored to individual participants, the scientists were able to reshape gut bacteria colonies and reduce post-meal blood sugar.

According to a new study, this situation isn’t altogether surprising.

“It showed a lot of variability – that foods that are bad for one person are not bad for another person”, Austin said. According to a Weizmann Institute study reported in the November 19 issue of the journal Cell, the answer varies from one person to another.

The study benefits not only doctors who are struggling to come up with better dietary courses for their patients, but it can also help people understand how good eating habits can help hoard off a myriad of diseases.

Segal said that results of the research could benefit many. “It might have been interesting to know how the insulin response differed among individuals”. “There’s so much more we need to look at”, she said. Based on these data, researchers then developed an algorithm that successfully predicted how a person’s blood sugar would respond to a given meal.