This episode, we've got the exclusive on the preliminary results of the world's largest personalized nutrition experiment. Genetic epidemiologist Tim Spector launched the study, called PREDICT, to answer a simple but important question: do we each respond to different foods differently? And, if so, why? How much of that difference is genetic, how much is due to gut microbes, and how much is due to any one of the dozens of other factors that scientists think affect our metabolic processes? You’ve heard of personalized medicine, will there be such a thing as personalized diets? And should there be? Can teasing out the nuances of how each individual body processes different foods make us all healthier? To find out, we signed ourselves up as study participants, sticking pins in our fingers, weighing our food, and providing fecal samples, all for science—and for you, dear listeners. Listen in now as we take part in this ground-breaking study, discover our own differences, and find out the early results!

Episode Notes

Tim Spector is a professor of genetics at King's College, London, and the author of two books, Identically Different and The Diet Myth.

Find out more about the PREDICT study here, and sign up to take part yourself, if you're interested.

Jennie Brand-Miller is a professor of human nutrition at the University of Sydney. Among her many books is Low GI Diet: Managing Type 2 Diabetes.

Tim Caulfield is the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta. His TV show, A User's Guide to Cheating Death, can be found on Netflix, and his most recent book is titled Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? (To which we reply, pretty much!)

Listener and illustrator Dave Szalay is the genius behind the custom artwork for this episode. We love his work, which you can see more of here.

We wrote an article for The New York Times to go with this episode: check it out online here.