Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it doesn't have to subtract from human life. It can add to it. In fact, if you possess an abundance of it, you are truly blessed for you are immune to the mental malady even more common than the common cold.

Boredom.This contemplation about curiosity comes from creating this column. It began when early one Saturday morning I began reading the first printout in my To Be Read folder. The printout was primarily about an article titled "Bread Affects Clinical Parameters and Induces Gut Microbiome-Associated Personal Glycemic Responses."Now maybe the caffeine in the green tea hadn't kicked in yet, or maybe my advancing age has made 5:30 a.m. too early for intellectual endeavors, but seeing the lengthy title caused me to cry out, "Who on earth reads this stuff?"Then I giggled wickedly.I do.More importantly, I do because I want to. I want to learn the latest about how the consumption of different types of bread affects the bacteria in the stomach which in turn affects the amount of and the hormonal response to blood sugar.And after I learn, I like to share the knowledge in the hope that you're the curious type, too - curious enough to experiment with your diet because of a column or two.What I learned from the previously mentioned printout simply reinforced something I've written about frequently and most recently as three weeks ago: For dieting to be successful, it needs to be an individualized endeavor.And what better proof of that than a study that shows "different people react differently, even to the same foods"?Eran Elinav, the researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel who offered the prior opinion to Medical News Today for online article that appeared in June, further explained this study indicates that "to date, the nutritional values assigned to foods have been based on minimal science" and that explains why, "one-size-fits-all diets have failed miserably."In the study, the Weizmann Institute researchers employed 20 healthy subjects who normally received about 10 percent of their daily calories from bread and increased that to 25 percent.Half consumed processed white bread for a week; the other half, artisanal whole wheat sourdough bread. After a two-week break, the process began again, but this time each subject ate the other type of bread.Before and during the study, the subjects' responses to the dietary changes were monitored by measuring calcium, iron, magnesium, fat, cholesterol,and waking glucose levels, as well as the production of enzymes in the liver and kidney. The gut bacteria of the subjects were also measured before, during, and after the study.Now prior research found that - when it comes to affecting blood sugar levels - eating processed white bread is akin to swallowing a few spoonfuls of table sugar. In either case, your blood sugar spikes rapidly, so rapidly that more than the customary amount of insulin is secreted by the pancreas.This excess insulin removes blood sugar that should remain for optimal functioning, leaving you feeling weak and hungry and probably causing you to eat again - regardless of the amount of calories you just consumed. To make matters worse, the muscle cells usually won't accept the scavenged blood sugar that the excess insulin transports, so it gets dropped off at the fat stores.Unfortunately, the fat stores aren't fussy. They'll accept any and all blood sugar and store it as fat.That's how people gain far more weight than what's good for them. According to the latest statistics provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 36.5 percent of U.S. adults are now clinically obese, which is primarily why diabetes has increased in the U.S. by 22 percent in just the last 15 years.Eat whole wheat bread, however, and prior research showed the digestive process takes longer. Slower digestion moderates the release of sugar into the bloodstream, which lessens insulin secretion and limits fat storage.Or at least that's what mainstream medicine previously taught.But the Weizmann Institute research published in June by the journal Cell Metabolism showed that when the results of the two 10-subject groups were averaged together and compared "no measurable differences occurred." Moreover, about half the subjects actually had lower levels of blood sugar when eating the processed white bread as opposed to the artisanal whole wheat sourdough bread.That just shouldn't be, according to the Glycemic Index, a numeric-ranked score derived from years of research and based on how drastically foods make your blood sugar rise, with pure glucose (sugar) given a value of 100. This index is used by many professionals to help patients maintain a healthy body weight and/or mitigate type 2 diabetes.The researchers at the Weizmann Institute theorize that it's the makeup of the bacteria in the digestive system that creates the inconsistencies that make the Glycemic Index less than reliable.Whether or not that's true, this much is: the one-size-fits-all diet needs to go the way of the woolly mammoth, the dinosaur, and the dodo bird.