those healthy individuals, a bowl of cereal sent their glucose levels into a zone of deregulation thought to be attainable only by people with diabetes. Sixteen of the 20 participants experienced a glucose spike above 140 mg/dL (the cutoff for prediabetes, signaling problems with glucose regulation), and some even spiked above 200 mg/dL (in the range of type 2 diabetes). That didn’t mean that the participants were diabetic—they weren’t. But it did mean that healthy people could spike as high as diabetics and suffer the harmful side effects those spikes cause. The discovery was groundbreaking.
