
Study: Healthy foods are unique to individuals - hunglee2
http://news.meta.com/2015/11/19/cell-nutrition-is-personal-identical-foods-produce-healthy-and-unhealthy-responses-in-different-individuals/
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manmal
Business idea: Let people send in blood samples taken before and after meals,
and analyze specific markers (especially glucose). Why a selftest? AFAIK the
conventional way would be too expensive to do at a doctor's, at least here in
Austria one glucose tolerance test is about €30 (and you would need 10-20 of
them). It's also uncomfortable (1-2h sitting in the waiting room).

Does something like that exist yet?

UPDATE: Just found [http://www.metabolic-balance.com](http://www.metabolic-
balance.com), who seem to analyze hormone levels to create a personalized diet
plan. But not exactly a low friction solution?

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superzamp
I think it's on the researcher's roadmap, have a look at their website:
[http://newsite.personalnutrition.org/WebSite/HowItWorksStudy...](http://newsite.personalnutrition.org/WebSite/HowItWorksStudy.aspx)

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DrScump
The _Cell_ paper full text is viewable for free here:
[http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01481-6](http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(15\)01481-6)

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ccozan
This study is long due. Is it good that we are now past anecdotical stories
from friends or family ( "I can eat that a lot, but if I just take a piece of
this I will feel bad" .. " For me is however the other way around..." , and so
on ).

Nice to see the usage of machine learning to detect the dietary patterns. Too
bad that this methods are very far from being used in the field ( i.e. my
local family doctor ).

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dasboth
The worst thing about those anecdotal stories is how adamant everyone usually
is that they're right, as if their observations about themselves must be true
of the general population. I've always thought there's no reason why both
people can't be right about what's right for _them_ , hopefully this will take
off.

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jpmattia
> _as if their observations about themselves must be true of the general
> population._

Worth noting that such attitude extends far beyond just food.

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dasboth
Very true. It also depends on the person, some people will happily say "I
don't eat X, it gives me indigestion" whereas someone else will tell you that
_you_ shouldn't eat X because it gives _them_ indigestion.

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tormeh
So, how are we supposed to know what to eat? Any correlation with what we
think tastes better?

Anyway, isn't this pretty bad news for Soilent?

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TheCowboy
The traditional general advice of eating a well-diversified diet (weighted
towards plants and away from statistically less healthy foods) likely still
holds. It's difficult to pick specific foods without a lot of testing and
experience.

This is still a single study that requires replication and metaanalysis.

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taurath
The idea is that given everyone has a relatively unique gut biome a "healthy"
plant (or other food) might cause a huge unhealthy spike in blood sugar and
tendency towards less healthy gut bacteria. Its very interesting to think
about the implications though.

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dschiptsov
..and locations (air quality, humidity, water sources, soils).

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dsfsdfd
Hallelujah

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dsfsdfd
I just meant that this should have been done a long time ago.

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vcdimension
There's a lot of interesting new discoveries being made about the effects of
the microbiome on human health. You can participate in this research, and get
a profile of your own microbiome here:
[https://microbio.me/AmericanGut/](https://microbio.me/AmericanGut/)

