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This Thanksgiving, before you load your plate with turkey, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and all the usual holiday fare, you might want to reflect on the findings of the Personalized Nutrition Project. This study found that people who consumed identical meals showed huge differences in the rise of their blood sugar levels. This finding suggests that people would be more likely to stay healthy if they were to shun universal dietary advice, and instead embrace personalized diets.
The Personalized Nutrition Project focused on blood sugar because elevated levels are a major risk factor for diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome. It also recognized that existing dietary methods often fail to control blood sugar adequately.
To account for the risk of elevated blood sugar, doctors and nutritionists rely on a decades-old standard, the glycemic index (GI), which ranks foods based on how they affect blood sugar level. This approach, however, is based on studies that average how small groups of people respond to various foods.
Hoping to find a more nuanced approach, scientists at the Weizmann Institute decided to undertake what they characterized as the largest investigation of its kind.
“We devised a machine-learning algorithm that integrates blood parameters, dietary habits, anthropometrics, physical activity, and gut microbiota measured in this cohort and showed that it accurately predicts personalized postprandial glycemic response to real-life meals,” wrote the authors of the Cell article.
Read full, original post: Blood Sugar Responses to Diet Highly Individualized
