Personalized Dieting

The December 11th edition of the Week is catching up with something we already discussed here. This is the second time I have heard about this, but no more information on how to get involved.

I read in a fashion magazine that models are using acid test strips to find out how acidic their urine is and then they eat something to help modify the ph level in their body. Is this similar? Meaning, can we, as lay people, do some simple testing with the tools already available to us to figure some of this out on our own? Or, I suppose the tried and true, elimination diets.

The way people metabolize food varies dramatically from person to person, so no one diet can work for everyone. That’s the conclusion of a new study that finally explains why a weight-loss plan that helps one person might do absolutely nothing for another. Researchers in Israel asked 800 healthy and pre-diabetic adults between 18 and 70 to keep a record of their meals, sleep, and exercise for one week. An analysis of participants’ gut microbes, along with continuous monitoring of their blood sugar levels, showed significant variations among people eating identical foods. “In some cases, individuals have opposite responses to one another,” co-author Eran Segal tells The Washington Post. For example, some people who ate supposedly healthful bananas or tomatoes experienced a sharp blood sugar spike, while having no adverse reaction to a glass of wine or a slice of pizza. The opposite was true for other people. In a follow-up study, Segal’s team created individually tailored diets based on people’s lifestyle, medical history, and other factors. Many of these customized diets were unorthodox, enabling some people to enjoy small amounts of alcohol, chocolate, or ice cream. The findings, researchers say, could transform the treatment of obesity, diabetes, and other conditions, and lead to personalized diet plans. “We think we know how to treat these conditions, and it’s just that people are not listening and are eating out of control,” Segal said. But “in many cases we were giving them the wrong advice.”

I didn't copy the picture the Week used with this article... I thought I'd use a picture of Foie Gras, a personal favorite, rather than pizza. I took the foie gras photo from the Dartagnan web site.