Eran Segal - The Personalized Diet: The Pioneering Program to Lose Weight and Prevent Disease

The Personalized Diet is a culmination of two years of extensive effort. It translates a large set of results and discoveries stemming from years of grueling scientific research performed at our two labs into a story that is easy to grasp for nonscientists and touches upon the very basis of our lives: our diet, health, risk of becoming obese and developing diabetes and many other modern diseases, and the mysterious bacteria that live within us and with us and make us who we are.

We are grateful to our agent, Alex Glass, for recognizing that this story should be brought into the broad public and for initiating, assisting, and guiding us throughout the process. We are deeply indebted to Eve Adamson, who has spent countless hours brainstorming, writing, and editing with us, in an effort to bridge the gap between science and common knowledge, to make this book accessible to all. We couldnt have done this without you! We thank our publisher, Grand Central Publishing, for believing in us and for taking this idea from its raw form, step-by-step through the journey of book creation. In this regard, we especially thank Sarah Pelz and Sheila Curry Oakes for their insights and help in editing the book.

We are grateful to the Weizmann Institute of Science for providing us with the complete academic freedom to carry out research that is driven solely by our curiosity to explore the unknown in a way that we deem as most interesting. It is this boundary-free and limitless environment that allows a computer scientist and an immunologist the freedom to decide to study nutrition. The state-of-the-art infrastructure and support of our institute allows us to probe into the very secrets of life.

We are deeply thankful to the many students, postdocs, research associates, technicians, and other lab members of the Segal and Elinav labs who have joined, from across the world, this journey of studying nutrition, the microbiome, and how both interact with the human body in promoting health or the risk of disease. From secretaries, to hourly students, to autoclaving personnel, to staff scientists, you are all part of our team. Your creativity, drive, intelligence, diligence, motivation, and endless effort are driving us forward in our quest to cure human disease. We are lucky to be working with such a talented team as yourselves. The stories in this book are your stories as well.

I (Eran Segal) wish to thank Eran Elinav for being such a close collaborator and friend, and for just being there day and night, to consult and advise on both small and large issues alike. The different and complementary skills and knowledge that you bring always enrich me with a different and fresh perspective, making the end result much better and the way to get there enjoyable.

I (Eran Elinav) would like to thank my partner in crime, Eran Segal, for being a long-standing scientific partner, colleague, and, of no less importance, friend. You come from a different background and speak a different scientific language, but you make our interaction a joyful and fulfilling intellectual and personal experience.

We would both like to thank our mutual friend Professor Eran Hornstein (a third Eran!) for recognizing our common scientific interests and introducing us to each other on a cold New Haven afternoon in 2012, which was the beginning of what continues to be a long and fruitful partnership.

And last, but not least, we are deeply thankful to our beloved families. Our parents, Rachel and Yoffi Segal, and Rivka and Yankale Elinav; our wives, Keren Segal and Hila Elinav; and our children, Shira, Yoav, and Tamar Segal, and Shira, Omri, and Inbal Elinav. For too many years, we have seen far too little of you, and even less so with the making of this book. But your love, partnership, and continuous support are what make our clock (and microbiome) tick. Keren, your passion for nutrition over the past two decades, which I once ignored, has finally caught up with me and become a major part of my world. I thank you both for that and for the endless discussions and advice that you gave me on the subject. Hila, your wisdom, common sense, healthy skepticism, and (as an infectious disease specialist) your endless knowledge of microbes are always instrumental to me. We will never stop arguing about the role of microbes and human excretions (yes, at dinner; yes, in front of the children) and having a laugh while at it. Keren and Hila, we could never have done any of this without the two of you.