In the introduction to last week's column, you learned I prefer including personal experience in an article along with the results of studies and observations by experts as a way to "widen the scope." Yet the article about the many benefits to eating red beets contains not a single personal experience.

Was that a mistake? An unintentional omission? Absolutely not.I could have written at length about the first time I consumed three 15.5-ounce cans of red beets in half-can increments in the 48 hours before a bicycle race. I won that race by breaking away from the pack and staying away - even though the course was relatively flat and didn't really suit my abilities.I could have explained that every other time I followed the aforementioned eating plan and also tapered my training (I sometimes ride too hard in the days before an event and no sort of food change can counteract that) my legs felt great, and the results were mostly good. (Bike racing is, after all, quite often a crapshoot. The luckiest rider wins almost as often as the smartest or the strongest).I could have told you how I save the juice and drink that the night before and morning of the race, so that I'm getting nine doses of nitrate over the two days instead of six, but I did not.Instead, the article concludes with a list of other foods that contain significant amounts of nitrate - the compound found in red beets that increases blood flow while reducing blood pressure and the amount of oxygen needed by the muscles during activity, making it easier for your muscle cells to produce energy.Why?Partially because relatively few readers run, ride, swim, lift, or body build competitively. Partially because relatively few readers would include red beets in their favorite-foods list. And primarily because a study that I stumbled across while finishing last week's article is further proof of a theory I first verbalized over 30 years ago.Omitting personal experience from last week's article and reflecting upon the reason why suitably serves as a segue to that study and this week's column.While teaching a nutrition class to other teachers back then, I was asked why a diet that worked wonderfully for one person worked woefully for another. Since some of the class lacked even rudimentary knowledge of nutrition, I kept my explanation simple.I said our metabolisms are like snowflakes. That no two are perfectly alike.As a result, while two people may experience similar results from the same diet, it's just as likely that they would not.The more I thought about the snowflake theory, the more I liked it. Eventually, I wrote about it. In the years since, more and more research has suggested that that elementary analogy is certainly on target.Take this study published in the November 2015 issue of Cell (which I somehow missed until just recently), for instance. In it, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel advanced my snowflake theory by showing a flaw in a system used to create diets and fight diabetes: the glycemic index (GI).In short, the GI measures how fast and to what degree a food eaten in isolation raises your blood sugar by giving table sugar a base score of 100. Foods with a number near or even above that raise blood sugar rapidly and generally need to be avoided by diabetics. Foods with a value of 50 or lower don't.Therefore, certain foods designated as low GI foods could be featured in a food plan to keep diabetics and dieters alike from experiencing insulin spikes and the inevitable addition of body fat.Or so we thought.When the Weizmann Institute researchers tracked the blood sugar levels of 800 people for over a week, however, that didn't pan out. They found there really are no set GI scores.Where one subject would score a 62 when eating a ripe banana - the "right" number according to prior research - another would score a 56, and a third a 67.Ultimately, the Weizmann Institute research shows GI scores are not universal but reflect how a specific food is handled by the specific metabolism of an individual. There is no norm.Yet the GI can serve an important purpose. While different subjects had different metabolic responses to the same foods, the research also found that a subject's response to a specific foods remained the same over the course of the study.In other words, even though scientists cannot create a true, all-encompassing glycemic index, you can create a one that's true for you.Hmm. Sounds a bit like that off-the-cuff, snowflake theory I intuitively pieced together years ago, doesn't it?Now that last question wasn't written to pat me on the back as much as kick you in the behind. Get to it. Creating a diet that works for you is exactly that: work. But it's as important as any work you'll ever do.Next week's column will offer advice on how to go about it.Contact Kevin Kolodziejski at

kolo@ptd.net