A new study appears to confirm what you might have suspected for some time: that whether a food causes you to gain fat or not differs from person to person.

Maintaining normal blood sugar level is crucial in preventing obesity and other symptoms of metabolic syndrome, so researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science went looking for an accurate method of predicting postprandial glycemic responses (PPGR), or by how much different foods cause your blood sugar level to rise after a meal.

They enlisted 100 participants and measured effects of 46,898 meals eaten by these participants. The team found – as they expected to find – that age and body mass index were linked with higher blood glucose levels after a meal. But they also found something they didn’t expect: people had vastly different physical responses to the exact same food.

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To give one example, one obese woman’s blood sugar levels sky-rocketed whenever she ate tomatoes, suggesting her attempts at healthy eating may, ironically, have been causing her to gain weight.

The team at Weizmann then conducted a microbiome analysis of each participant’s stool sample, and found specific microbes were linked to each person’s PPGR. By making 26 additional volunteers a set of personalised meal plans, the team were able to reduce post-meal blood sugar levels and alter gut microbiata.

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H/T