Credit: King’s College London
Researchers led by King’s College London announced today the first published results from PREDICT, the largest ongoing nutritional study of its kind.
The results, published in Nature Medicine and presented at the American Society of Nutrition 2020, showed a wide range of metabolic responses after eating in apparently healthy adults and that inflammation triggered by the food we eat varies up to ten-fold.
Poor metabolic responses to food, where the body takes longer and works harder to clear the blood of fat and sugar, are linked with increased risk of conditions such as low-grade inflammatory diseases including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.
The results suggest improved health could be achieved by eating foods that are personalized to reduce inflammation after meals.
Senior researcher on the study Professor Tim Spector, King's College London, said, "When it comes to weight, we've traditionally put a huge emphasis on factors we have no control over, like genetics. The fact is, while genetics plays a role, there are many more important factors that impact an individual's response to food and maintenance of a healthy metabolism. This study shows that achieving a healthy weight requires a scientific approach to eating that takes into account an individual's unique biology."
Led by Professor Tim Spector and his team at King’s College London and spin-out health science company ZOE, in collaboration with researchers across the world, the PREDICT-1 study recruited participants across the UK and the US. This consisted of 1,103 participants, including 660 identical and non-identical twins from the TwinsUK cohort.
The study measured a wide range of markers from blood glucose, fat, and insulin levels to exercise, sleep, and gut bacteria (microbiome) over two weeks. It is the most detailed study to date to look at all the different factors that affect our responses to food together.
Despite wide variation in metabolic responses between participants, results from identical meals eaten on different days showed that individual responses to the same foods were remarkably consistent for each person.
PREDICT-1 study results showed:
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