Healthy or Incompatible People react differently to red tomatoes

Healthy can also be unhealthy: people react differently to food
Of course, nutritional experts and medical professionals are advised to eat as much vegetables as possible to stay healthy. But apparently, such recommendations are not equally meaningful to all. A new study shows that people react in completely different ways to the same foods. So healthy can also be unhealthy.
Individual reactions to different foods
It has long been known that different foods affect the blood sugar levels differently. Nutrition experts and physicians recommend that people who have high blood sugar eat as many vegetables as possible. Among other things, tomatoes that should lower blood sugar. But apparently such advice is not equally useful for all concerned. Researchers have now found in a study that people react much more individually to food than previously thought.

Not all foods are equally well tolerated by all people. What is healthy or unhealthy is therefore to be considered differentiated. Image: Mara Zemgaliete - fotolia

Keep blood sugar under control
People with diabetes usually know what to do when blood sugar gets out of control. The standard recommendation is usually to resort to foods with a low glycemic index (GI). This value indicates how fast the blood sugar rises after eating a food. White bread or pasta, for example, have a high GI, vegetables such as artichokes, asparagus and tomatoes a low - at least that's what the textbook.

However, as scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rechovot, Israel, now report in the journal "Cell", this often looks very different in practice. The researchers around Eran Segal and Eran Elinav have documented the dietary habits of 800 compatriots with an app and tried to deduce how the food affected the metabolism.

Tomatoes can increase blood sugar in some people
Over a period of one week, study participants noted what they ate, when they exercised, when they fell asleep and woke up. All received standardized, completely identical meals for their breakfast. During the examination, the blood sugar level of the subjects was monitored. As expected, the rise in blood sugar levels depended on body mass index (BMI) and age, but it also showed that different people responded differently to the same foods. However, the same person on different days always reacted to certain foods the same. For example, in one subject the blood sugar level shot up each time she ate tomatoes.

"A personalized diet would not contain tomatoes for this woman, but it would include other foods that we would not believe are healthy, but which are 'healthy' for that woman," Eran Elinav said, " World "online. In some study participants, the blood sugar level after eating sushi rose more than ice cream. For others it was the other way round. One reason for the authors see the composition of intestinal bacteria.

Personalized nutritional plan
According to Segal, the glycemic index was developed in standardized tests on only 20 to 30 subjects. He said it may be a mistake that many people did not follow the advice of nutrition experts. "Maybe we just give them the wrong advice." General diet recommendations are obviously pointless here. According to the researchers, a personalized diet plan would have to be created for everyone to prevent more people from getting diabetes or being overweight. But even that is not practical, because the body has to be completely monitored and the reactions to all food needs to be clarified. The scientists were able to use an algorithm to predict precisely how the blood sugar level of the subjects behaved after eating certain foods. However, blood sugar levels are just one piece of the jigsaw puzzle for a healthy lifestyle. For example, how much fat is consumed or how much you move is also important. (Ad)