Metabolic
Syndrome: a cluster of conditions that includes obesity,
high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, and diabetes.
Glycemic Index: a
number that indicates how much and how quickly blood sugar increases after
consuming a carbohydrate-containing food.
-----------------------------------------------
Eat
This For Breakfast & You'll Get Fat
Eat toast made with white
bread or any sugary cereal for breakfast, and you'll probably pack on the
pounds--not because of the high calories in these foods, but rather because of
their high glycemic index. The BBC News
Online reports that researchers from
What are the best
breakfast foods?
That would be cold or hot cereals made from whole grains. Oatmeal is ideal. As
Mom used to say, oatmeal sticks to your ribs, and that means you'll eat more
sensibly at lunchtime because you won't have strong hunger pangs.
The perfect breakfast food may be oatmeal and other whole-grain
cereals.
Men who regularly eat
oatmeal and other whole-grain cereals instead of refined-grain cereals for
breakfast may live longer and reduce their risk of heart attack or stroke,
reports Reuters of new research from
So what IS a
whole-grain cereal?
Look at the list of ingredients on the side of the box. The first ingredient
must be either a whole grain or bran and have at least two grams of fiber per
serving to be called a "whole-grain" cereal.
The experiment: Study leader Simin
Liu and his colleagues at
The results: The more whole-grain cereal a man
reported eating for breakfast, the less likely he was to die from any cause or
from heart or blood vessel disease such as heart attack or stroke, even after
the investigators accounted for risk factors such as diabetes, obesity,
smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity, reports Reuters.
And if one bowl is good
for you, then two must be better! Go ahead and have seconds. The men who ate
the most cereal--that is, more than one serving a day--had a 17 percent lower
risk of death from any cause than men who rarely or never ate whole-grain
cereal. In addition, those who ate the most had a 20 percent lower risk of
death from cardiovascular disease than those who consumed the least.
If you just love refined
grains, take heart. While they won't help you live longer, they won't kill you
either. The Harvard researchers found no association between eating refined
cereals and mortality from cardiovascular disease.
The
message here is exciting. Eat the right foods for breakfast and you could lose
weight without dieting--just being smart in what you eat. Of course, the
opposite is true as well. If you eat the wrong foods, you could gain weight
even though you don't realize it. And the magic element is a low glycemic index or GI, which is a
measurement--assigned as a number of 0 to 100--to describe the effect specific
foods have on our blood sugar levels. Carbohydrates that breakdown quickly
during digestion have the highest GIs with a blood glucose response that is
fast and high. Carbohydrates that breakdown slowly, releasing glucose gradually
into the blood stream, have lower GIs.
Glycemic
Index: New Way to Count Carbs?
Evidence Mounts for Low-Glycemic
Index Diet to Control Diabetes
A carb
is not a carb is not a carb
-- at least when it comes to diabetes and getting control of high blood sugar.
A low-glycemic index diet may be the way to
go, say researchers.
Even foods with the same
carbohydrate content can trigger a wide difference in blood sugar levels -- as
much as fivefold. It all depends, say some researchers, on the food's glycemic index, a number that indicates how
much and how quickly blood sugar increases after consuming a
carbohydrate-containing food.
Why Glycemic Index Matters
Foods with a high glycemic index (and therefore a higher number) cause a
sudden and drastic jump in blood sugar levels. Low-glycemic
foods are more easily absorbed in the body and raise blood sugar more
gradually.
In the latest research,
Australian researchers analyzed data from 14 previous studies comparing the
effects of high- and low-glycemic foods on
blood sugar levels in people with diabetes. They then looked at results of a
blood test called HbA1c, which indicates average blood sugar levels
over the past three months.
Good Enough for a New
Drug
Researcher Jennie
Brand-Miller, PhD, and colleagues found that patients who ate a low-glycemic index diet reduced their HbA1c levels
by an average of 0.43 points above that produced by the high-glycemic index diet.
"That's significant
-- enough of a reduction to get a new [diabetes] drug to market," says
Gerald Bernstein, MD, former president of the American Diabetes Association and
an endocrinologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
"There is no
question that it's important for diabetics to pay close attention to the glycemic index of foods they eat," says
Bernstein, who was not involved in the study conducted by
"Remember, the issue
in diabetes is an inability to handle glucose. Whether or not you're taking
insulin, you're trying to match the body's insulin with the onslaught of
glucose going in. So you really need to know the probability of how quickly
blood sugar is going to bounce so you can better manage your disease. When you
eat a baked potato, glucose levels spike in milliseconds. With legumes or
fruits and vegetables, they go up in about 30 minutes."
What's High, What's
Low?
Although important, the
numbers can also be confusing because the glycemic
index of some foods may surprise you. As a general rule, the same low-fat,
high-fiber fare -- fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and legumes -- often
advised to manage weight and help prevent diabetes and other health conditions,
have a low glycemic index. Conversely,
starchy and processed foods such as potatoes, breads, and cereals usually have
a high glycemic index.
But there are exceptions.
For instance, a bowl of All-Bran cereal has a glycemic
index of 54, while a serving of spaghetti rates at 41, meaning the
high-fiber cereal spikes blood glucose more quickly and drastically. A handful
of raisins is 64, more than a serving of popcorn, at
55. White rice (56) has nearly twice the glycemic
index of a glass of apple juice, and an orange (43) has almost half the
index of watermelon (72).
The American Journal
of Clinical Nutrition lists any food under 55 as a low-glycemic food and any food more than 70 as high glycemic.
Haagen-Dazs vs. Baked
Potato
One study compared
various foods found that a bowl of Haagen-Dazs ice cream raises blood glucose
at a slower rate than a baked potato.
Still,
the use of diets with low glycemic index in
the treatment of diabetes remains controversial. There are contrasting
recommendations around the world, the Australian researchers note in their
study.
One possible reason: Most
of the studies thus far measuring blood sugar response to glycemic
indexed foods have been encouraging but small, says Angela D. Liese, PhD, MPH. Liese recently completed
her own research on how foods with high glycemic
indexes affect "metabolic syndrome" -- a cluster of conditions that includes obesity,
high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, and diabetes.
Her results have not yet been published.
The Australian
researchers' analysis of 14 studies had a total of only 356 patients.
Time
for a Change?
"This study is
important because it shows some really encouraging data, but a lot more
research is needed," says Liese, an
epidemiologist at the
The
study: The
British researchers recruited 37 children ages 9 to 12 and divided them into
three groups. The first ate a breakfast of porridge or a bran-based cereal with
a glycemic value of less than 55. The second
group had the same breakfast, but with added sugar to raise the glycemic value above 55. The last group ate white
bread and sugary cereals with a glycemic value
of 75 to 100. The children ate no snacks during the morning. At lunchtime, they
were allowed to eat all they wanted from an open buffet.
The results: The kids who ate a breakfast with a low GI index ate
significantly less for lunch than those who ate breakfast foods with a high GI.
They were also less likely to feel hungry between meals, notes the BBC. Calling
the study "remarkable," lead researcher Jeya
Henry told the BBC, "By selecting the type of breakfast we feed our
children, we can alter their subsequent food intake. Feeding them a high GI
breakfast will mean they will eat more." The study findings were published
in the journal Pediatrics.
Beware! The No. 1 Diet
Saboteur
If you're trying to
lose weight, the one thing that is most likely to derail your best diet plan
is...your family and close friends.
Don't believe it? Test it. Go on a diet. Lose a few pounds. Brag a little. And
then see what happens. Chances are, you'll find you're
the recipient of fattening food gifts. Your spouse may buy you a candy bar at
the movies or your co-worker will offer you cookies when the afternoon munchies
hit.
They aren't doing this to
be mean or vindictive. They probably aren't even conscious of it. But what they
are doing is sabotaging your weight loss success.
The problem can be
defined in one word: Change. A diet creates big changes in anyone's life. These are
changes welcomed by the dieter. But friends and family aren't in the same mode
of change. Be aware that diet sabotage is not done purposefully and
maliciously. It's unconscious.
You can fight the
sabotage by understanding why it happens.
--They feel guilty.
You're successfully losing weight. They're not. Giving you food is one way to
get you back to "normal."
--They don't
understand.
This is most common with people who have never had a weight problem and just
don't realize that you can't go back to eating anything you want just because
you lost a few pounds.
--They miss the old you.
And they miss the cookies you baked, the after-work "happy hours"
spent with co-workers, or the restaurant dinners out with the spouse.
One such strategy is to
get them on your side. Numerous studies have proven that when your social
network of family and friends supports your diet, it has a positive influence
on the results.
Platkin advises you to actively create
your own support network. That may mean joining organized meetings with others
who are trying to lose weight, encouraging family and friends to eat healthier
along with you, or even making new friends if the old ones keep giving you
candy bars. Best of all, find a weight-loss buddy either in your hometown or
online who will share the ups and downs of losing pounds with you.
Who Knew Cold Cereal
Did This?
People who eat lots of
whole-grain foods, especially fiber-rich cereals, may be less likely to develop
metabolic syndrome, a clustering of risk factors that often precedes type 2
diabetes and cardiovascular disease, Reuters reports
of new research from
In other words: Eat
cereal for breakfast. Stay healthy longer.
How much do you need to
eat? Three or more servings of whole grains daily, according to study author
Dr. Nicola M. McKeown of the Jean Mayer U.S.
Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts.
Three servings is a lot when you consider that the average American consumes
less than one serving of whole-grain foods a day. In addition to fortified cold
cereals, whole-grain foods include oatmeal, whole wheat bread, brown rice, and
more. But read the labels carefully! Whole grain products should list a whole
grain ingredient, such as "whole wheat," "whole rye,"
"whole oats" or "graham flour," as the first ingredient on
the label.
It's worth the effort to
get three or more servings daily. "People who ate this much whole grain
had better insulin sensitivity and were less likely to have the metabolic
syndrome," McKeown told Reuters.
Those who have metabolic
syndrome have at least three of these traits:
An estimated 24 percent of adults in the
The research findings were published in the journal
Diabetes Care.
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