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Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

Sourdough is purported to be healthier, have a lower glycemic index, etc. but this effect was not observed. They speculate that it may differ from person to person based on microbiome.

If I'd known that was the result I wouldn't have clicked through. The title is fucking idiotic.

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Microbiome is becoming the scapegoat for some studies when they can't find a root cause, is it REALLY that important or are we just seeing things our models failed at pushed to some little understood part of dietary science?

I've seen the microbiome argument used as an explanation for weight loss, carbs processing, fat processing, protein absorption and now this, it's just feeling too much of our failed model relying on this unknown territory.

The journalists do include two very frank quotations from peers criticizing the experiment and what conclusions could be drawn. So annoying headline maybe, but honestly reported. And in this topic the no-story, no-effect is the story. Perhaps artisanal sourdough is mostly similar to white bread, and the range of different glycemic responses gets subsumed by differences in individual responses to any generic bread. Artisanal bread and wonderbread, equally bad, equally good.

Sounds like the title served its purpose perfectly. Annoying and effective.

Plus, other researchers are skeptical of the results due to the low sample size (n = 20).

It exposes the high amount of variability in even simple nutritional experiments. At least it is honest. Unlike some research that suggest x is good by testing on similarly small samples.

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