Word: diets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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First it was fat, then it was carbs and, in recent years, the buzzword for the diet-conscious has become glycemic index. That's a measure of how quickly a food is broken down and absorbed by the body, and it's the driving principle behind such weight-loss plans as the Atkins and South Beach diets. But while scientific studies have documented the impact of too much dietary fat and carbohydrate on the body - making us heavier and increasing our risk of diabetes and heart disease - the evidence has not been as clear for high- or low-glycemic index...
...David Jenkins at the University of Toronto and St. Michael's Hospital and his colleagues report that a low-glycemic-index diet - including foods such as fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, flaxseed and quinoa - is better at lowering blood glucose levels in patients with diabetes than a high-fiber diet. Patients in the study who were assigned a low-glycemic diet reduced their blood glucose levels, as measured by the amount of hemoglobin A1C in their blood, by 0.50%, compared to an 0.18% drop in similar patients eating a diet high in cereal fiber. (See the top 10 food trends...
...Canadian team analyzed data from 210 diabetes patients, all of whom were taking medication to control their blood sugar. Because the medical management of diabetes still leaves patients with two to four times the average risk of heart disease, the study's authors wanted to explore whether a stricter diet could reduce that risk. The theory is that foods that break down quickly in the gut and flood the blood with glucose - high-glycemic foods - put an exceedingly heavy burden on the body to churn out enough insulin to process the sugar, leading to diabetes. Low-glycemic foods, which take...
Half of the patients in the study were placed on a low-glycemic index diet, and kept a journal of what they ate for six months. The other half consumed a "brown," or high-fiber, diet rich in cereal fibers including wheat, whole-grain breads, brown rice and potatoes with their skins, and also kept a journal of their food choices. All participants were told to avoid high-glycemic foods (the glycemic index of a food is typically measured as the amount by which a 50 g portion raises blood sugar compared with white bread or pure sugar), such...
After the six months, not only did the low-glycemic diet group show lower levels of blood glucose, but they also enjoyed a 1.7 mg/dL boost in HDL, or good cholesterol, while the high-fiber group experienced a .2 mg/dL drop in their HDL. Studies have shown that raising HDL levels is one way to prevent heart attacks, but it's not clear yet whether the current findings translate to any practical protection against heart disease. (See 9 kid foods to avoid...