Personalized Nutrition Research

This is the first research of its kind in the world concerning children and follows an innovative study conducted in adults at the Weizmann Institute, which found that the the body's glucose response after eating various foods is individual, and mediated by bowel bacteria.

The Institute of Gastroenterology, Nutrition and Liver Diseases at Schneider Children's will shortly initiate research in healthy children aged 6-11 to examine the body's response to sugar after eating various foods. Research actually began two years ago but was halted due to corona.

Bowel bacteria in the body are responsible for normal function, morbidty risk and breakdown of food. The human body contains billions of various nourishing bacteria, and each one of us has a different composition of these bacteria. The study will examine how various foods influence the level of glucose in children, and this comes after it was found that in adults, each has his or her own personal stamp of "good" and "bad" foods that are not necessarily what we all think.

The study will also investigate whether the Mediterranean diet typified by fresh and local foods, home-cooked, containing a range of plant sources (vegetables, fruit, full grains and legumes) with olive oil as well as milk products, fish and a variety of seeds, is preferable for children. Based on the findings, children will be provided with individual nutritional recommendations that will help them maintain a balanced level of blood glucose and decrease the sense of hunger, weight gain, diabetes risk, hypertension, fatty liver, cardiac diseases and more. Participation in the study includes being connected to a device for continuous sugar monitoring, providing samples of blood, urine and stools and undergoing check-ups over a two-week period.

For further details and registration, kindly contact the Reut Klein in the Institute of Gastroenterology, Nutrition and Liver Diseases at [email protected] or 03-9253039.