What is the best diet for humans? | Eran Segal | TEDxRuppin

 Translator: Fatimah Alzubidi Auditor: Mohammed Liyaudheen Wafy This is me ten years ago. I was 40 pounds more than I am now, Like everyone else, I wanted to lose weight, And like many others, I would have liked to know what is the best diet for humans? In fact, many of us have an opinion on this question. Some think a diet with less fat and plant matter is best. Others are that little food For carbohydrates, full of protein and animal fats is the best.

And others have opinions about how much sugar to eat, Or about the amount of salt, cholesterol, saturated fat, or dairy products Which in our diet. But the question is what is the best diet, It is a scientific question, So there should be no opinions or beliefs. Whether System A is better than System B, So a comparative study of what is enough people It really shows.

No opinions or beliefs, just tangible data, right? What is also clear is whether it is the best diet out there.

So we have to find it Because the incidence of diseases related to the diet It has increased significantly in the last few decades. Now, you might think it's because people don't listen to what we tell them. However, this is actually not true. People are already following dietary instructions. However, according to the CDC, If you live in the United States, There is a more than 70% chance that you are overweight or have diabetes Or a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

There is overwhelming evidence that diet and lifestyle They are the main causes of these diseases. Why, after a lot of research, We do not have the answer to a question that seems simple What is the best diet for humans? What I want to tell you today is why we don't have the answer We were asking the wrong question. It is a wrong question as it assumes The best diet is based on food And not on the person who takes it. But what if our genetic differences, our lifestyle, and the bacteria in our gut Cause different responses to food?

What if these differences explain why some people respond to certain diets While others do not respond? What if our food had to be designed in keeping with our unique natures? This is the question that we must pose in our research, Which is what I worked on with my friend Iran Elinaf And many graduate students from the Weizmann Institute of Science. And to take a scientific approach, We first searched for a measure of healthy nutrition that we should study.

Most studies show that losing weight or developing heart disease after diets.

But these problems are affected by many factors that have nothing to do with diet. Which takes many weeks to change, In the end, you get one measure of success. If not, it is very difficult to understand why. Instead, we are looking for a scale It has to do with weight control And diseases related to nutrition, But there is also one measure that we can measure accurately and easily on a large number of people. This leads us to focus on the level of glucose in the blood, More precisely, changes in blood glucose levels after a meal.

We call this the "meal glucose response". What is its importance? Well, because your glucose spiked after a meal Promotes both hunger and weight gain.

After we had a meal, Our body digests carbohydrates and turns them into simple sugars And it releases it into the bloodstream. From there, with the help of insulin, Cells throughout the body remove glucose from the blood To be used as an energy source.

But insulin sends a signal for our body to convert excess sugar into fat To store it too, This is the primary way we gain extra weight. In addition, it causes a rapid flow of glucose into the blood. By releasing too much insulin, our bodies Which, in turn, reduces glucose levels to less than normal, Which makes us hungry and wanting to eat more.

Glucose responses to a meal are also related to our health Because they have been shown to be a risk factor for obesity, Diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other metabolic disorders. A recent study followed 2,000 people for 30 years Show the highest glucose levels after a meal It predicts the highest mortality rate overall.

And last, and not least important, with recent technological advances, We can track a person's glucose levels Continuously for an entire week. Whereas, the average person eats about 50 meals a week, This allows us to measure glucose responses to 50 meals in just one week.

It also provides us with the glucose response to a meal In a direct way to measure the effect of each serving, Instead of the usual methods That only evaluates the effect of the diet as a whole. There are definitely other factors besides glucose levels Affect a healthy diet. But this is the important factor, And his solution could be too dangerous to progress.

Fortunately, we managed to convince 1,000 healthy people with this idea And we connect their bodies to one of these glucose sensors We tracked their glucose levels continuously for an entire week. During that week, the participants recorded what they ate Through a program we developed. This allowed us to measure glucose responses For 50 meals per person participating And nearly 50,000 different meals for all of the 1,000 participants, Our study becomes the largest It has been applied to solve this problem to this day. So what did we find? Well, when we looked at averages, we saw trends.

For example, increase carbohydrates in a meal It increases the response. This is not very surprising. Another thing perhaps even more surprising, Excess fat in the meal reduces the response.

But this is the final result of our study For every direction we found, There were a lot of people very different from that. Basically, when the same person ate the same meal on different days, The response was very close.

However, when different people ate the same meal, The response was very different. For example, white bread often has no effect On the blood glucose level for some people, But it causes some high mutations. The same goes for every food we tested. Like rice, pizza, sushi, and even chocolate. For every food, there were people with low response, Others have a moderate response.

And some have a very high response. It wasn't just about food. It was also about the person taking it. So while averages and trends are informative, It may not suffer much for anyone. Now, it wasn't about the body's good handling of sugars Everyone has certain foods that raise their glucose level.

And even some people have these responses opposite. For example, some people get high glucose after ice cream, unlike rice.

Some have higher glucose after rice, not ice cream. In fact, the rise in many people occurs after rice as well as ice cream. My wife is a clinical dietitian, When I showed her this data, I was amazed.

Because as a practice, it relies of course on general nutritional guidelines. The first thing that she was telling With her new patients diagnosed with pre-diabetes To stop eating foods such as ice cream And to eat a lot of complex carbohydrates such as brown rice. So, once you see it our data, I already realized her nutritional advice For most of her patients it didn't help, But in fact, it quickly drove them to get sick That her advice was meant to stop him.

So our results for the big data set convince us Responses to food differ from person to person. And that diets that maintain normal glucose levels It must be personally tailored to the person concerned.

It also shows, in our opinion, why the current food paradigm Who searches for the best diet is inherently wrong. There is no "best diet for humans".

Our responses to food vary from person to person. So our nutritional advice should be different. And personalized dietary advice was our next challenge.

To overcome them, we measured several criteria among the participants Which we thought explains the differences between people In the glucose response to meals. This includes basic measures and lifestyle factors such as age, weight, Height and physical activity, Also, blood tests, medical background and nutritional questionnaires And also DNA sequences for each of the human genomes And the composition of the gut bacteria for each person.

Now, of these, it was the gut bacteria Mostly the unusual thing that we examined. For hundreds of years, we have known that bacteria live in our bodies. But only with recent developments in DNA sequencing We can begin to study it on a large scale.

And when we did, we found this broad group Of the hundreds of different species that live within us, Collectively called "our microbes." It has a great impact on health and disease. And what makes the microbe even more interesting Is that unlike genes, we can change it In the simplest way, such as changing what we eat. The bacteria in our body help us digest some food. It produces molecules that are taken up by our cells And it affects the functions of our members.

For example, in our research we studied "artificial sweeteners", Which most of us consume on a daily basis In various soft drinks and other products. And we found that the consumption of artificial sweeteners It changes the composition of intestinal bacteria when we tested it in mice They showed symptoms of diabetes. So this study and others lead us Let's ask if microbes are important In illustrating people's differences in their glucose responses to meals.

So we took these microbes and other medical data that we collected, And we used an advanced algorithm learning machine Automatically searches for rules That predicts glucose responses to meals. For example, it can be a rule If you are over fifty, and have certain types of bacteria, Your response to bananas will be high.

The comprehensive algorithm includes tens of thousands of these rules Which are extracted automatically from the data. This trend is actually similar Sites like Amazon Recommended for Books, Except that we applied it to how people respond to food. And we can show that this algorithm can take anyone, Even people not participating in the study, It predicts meal response with high accuracy. And as a final step, we asked if we could use this algorithm To design diets that maintain normal blood glucose levels. So, we have brought in new participants, And we used the algorithm to predict two diets for each person.

In one diet we called "the bad", We asked Al Khurameya to predict the food Which will have high responses from that person. And the other "good" diet We asked him to predict which food has low responses.

Each person followed each diet for a week. Now, by design, the diets should be identical in calories. In fact, all breakfast, lunch and dinner It should have the same calories on different days.

It is also important to note That each person took a different order from the others, And there was some food Which were given to some people on a good diet And for some people a bad diet. Now, to show that these diets Not like you might think. Here, a diet for one of the participants. Now, see if you can guess for yourself Which of the algorithms predicted a good system? And any of them predicted a bad system for this participant.

As you look at it, note that every diet contains foods That wouldn't normally appear on standard diets.

Now for fun, let's play a guessing game, Everyone should participate. So raise your hand if you think the diet on the left is a good one. Well raise your hand if you think the one on the left is the best. Well, we definitely see that opinions are split in half here, What appears to us is that this is an unimaginable thing.

And I can tell you that, to this participant, Al Khurazmiah predicted that the diet is on the right, And ice cream is a good system. So far the only question is how good these diets are to apply. What I will show you later is our opinion It is perhaps the most striking finding of our study. So here are the persistent sugar levels For this participant when on a poor diet. You clearly see abnormal glucose levels after meals Indicating that this participant has impaired glucose tolerance It is likely that it is pre-diabetes.

However, when following the good ice cream regimen And it has the same calories as a bad diet. This diabetic participant achieved completely normal glucose levels Not even one hike for the whole week.

Obviously, we are very pleased to have these results. In fact, we get similar results for most of the participants When designing diets using an algorithm. Not only that, the good system showed constant numerous changes In most of the participants' intestinal flora.

These changes seemed to be beneficial. Because the bacterium in other studies has been linked to good results Tended to increase after a good diet, The bacteria associated with the disease tended to decrease. Indeed, these results are very interesting Because she suggested that, in addition to adjusting blood glucose levels During the week of the intervention, A good diet has also shown good effects That could last even a week after the intervention. So what should be the message of all this? Well, based on the fluctuations in glucose responses Which we noticed over 1000 participants, We concluded that there is no single best diet for humans Because we are all different.

It also means when a diet is not suitable for you, It may not be the best fit for you. The failure of your diet does not mean your failure. Maybe your diet is failing Simply saying, because it didn't take personal information into account. So, what can we do with this information? Well, now, you can calculate Glucose response to your favorite meals Using a simple pharmacy glucose meter.

I guarantee you will be amazed Foods that will raise glucose levels but not. As a complete solution, We are working hard to make the algorithm available to everyone To be able, from your home To give important clinical information about you, Send a sample of microbes, In return, get your own nutritional advice. We also begin long-term nutritional intervention studies For both pre-diabetic and diabetic patients that will last for a whole year. Because we believe the effect is from modifications of blood glucose levels That we were able to get in a week could last longer, We may be able to reverse or even address these situations. Which is considered one of the worst diseases of our time.

More broadly, I think we are entering a new era in the study of nutrition, And we will move away from the question of what is the best diet for humans, Instead, we will focus on the most appropriate question What is the best diet for me.

Thank you so much. (clap).