Are personalised diets the best way to be healthy?

Question 1

gut (informal)

Answer 1

intestines; long tube inside the body which starts below the stomach and helps digest food.

Well, while many diets claim to improve health or help you lose weight, recent research shows that what counts is not what you eat but how your body reacts.
Yes, and that reaction doesn’t happen where you might think – not in the brain, or tongue, or even the stomach, but in the gut

That took ‘guts’, which is the second meaning of the word: courage.

Question 2

microbes

Answer 2

tiny, microscopic organisms living inside the human body.

Yes, and that reaction doesn’t happen where you might think – not in the brain, or tongue, or even the stomach, but in the gut, …
Inside everyone’s gut are millions of microbes – tiny living organisms, too small to see without a microscope. Some of them are good for us, some bad.
Microbes help digest food, but they influence our bodies more than we know. Think of them as chemical factories that cause our individual reaction to the food we eat.
This mix of gut microbes is unique and different for everyone, even identical twins.

Question 3

calories

Answer 3

the units which measure the amount of energy food provides.

All these so-called myths that I’d believed, whether it was about calories, about fats, when to eat, how to eat, were based on flimsy or no evidence, very old, very poor quality, and had been repeated so much that people didn’t think to question them.

Question 4

flimsy

Answer 4

weak and difficult to believe; not convincing.

All these so-called myths that I’d believed, whether it was about calories, about fats, when to eat, how to eat, were based on flimsy or no evidence, very old, very poor quality, and had been repeated so much that people didn’t think to question them.

He discovered that much of the dietary advice he had heard was either incorrect or based on flimsy evidence. If evidence is flimsy, it’s weak and unconvincing.

Question 5

skinny

Answer 5

very thin.

It was the surprising differences in weight between one twin and another that made Dr Spector realise that no two people have the same gut – even identical twins’ guts are different.

We collected lots of these samples, sequenced them, and looked at twins where one was overweight and one was skinny… and we found in every case, the skinnier twin had a more diverse microbiome, greater numbers of different species and they also nearly always had high numbers of a couple of microbes that just stuck out of the crowd .

Although genetically identical, one twin was overweight, while the other twin was skinny, or very thin.

Question 6

stick/stuck out of the crowd

Answer 6

be very easy to notice, in a positive sense.

We collected lots of these samples, sequenced them, and looked at twins where one was overweight and one was skinny… and we found in every case, the skinnier twin had a more diverse microbiome, greater numbers of different species and they also nearly always had high numbers of a couple of microbes that just stuck out of the crowd

Two microbes, christensenella and akkermansia, were especially effective. Dr Spector says these microbes stuck out of the crowd, meaning they were easy to notice for their positive effect. And since everyone’s microbes are different, it follows that a personalised diet which selects the friendliest food for your gut, is best.