Yes, I read this too – I must explain that I post work- related news items to a business forum, and unfortunately have to trawl the Daily Mail as well as other newspapers for these, otherwise I’d not be reading it – and I thought that this was purely a method to have people decide that they didn’t need to reduce carbs.
Deciding whether crackers tasted sweet or not didn’t seem to me to be a particularly scientific test.
As you say, without testing it myself I can’t say!
But a lot of the science-based books about low-carbohydrate eating (I’m thinking about The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Eating by Volek and Phinney, which is a well-respected source) mention the variable responses of different subjects to nutrition. Some are able to eat comparatively large quantities of complex carbs, when others find lower quantities better for them.
We see it here with some people having quick and relatively easy success with both weight loss and blood sugar reductions, and other people who find it frustratingly much more difficult and slow, despite sticking rigorously to the ‘rules’. I believe it must be because of the huge number of variables within us all, from insulin resistance to carbohydrate tolerance to gut bacteria, just to mention a few.
Some people have quite tricky ‘carb flu’ and others, who seem to have previously eaten much the same refined carbs, escape it or have much milder symptoms. And that doesn’t even mention the effects one can have from lack of sodium after the amount of liquid we’re drinking.
I think Dr MM has the right idea in making the BSD relatively simplistic and therefore easy to understand and follow. It’s possible to explore further if you want to, but absolutely not necessary. Hopefully this will make the eating plan workable for a huge number of people, because it certainly needs to. π