It may not be the most surprising wellness finding of all time, but researchers have discovered that if you eat a lot of low-fibre and processed foods that quickly spike blood sugars, otherwise known as a high-glycaemic diet, you may have a significantly higher risk of the most common form of diabetes.
Dr. David Ludwig, who studies obesity at Boston Children’s Hospital but was not involved in the work, explains, ‘By raising blood sugar and demanding that the pancreas keep pumping more insulin, meal after meal, day after day, a high-glycaemic diet can put people at risk over the edge.’
For the report, which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers at the University of California, Oxford University, and others analysed 24 studies published since 1997 that tracked what 125,000 adults ate. The findings confirmed the associations that other researchers have made between high-glycaemic foods, like white bread and potatoes, and diabetes.
The research also showed that, on average, adults eat 139 grams of sugar or its equivalent every day, and though it did not precisely pinpoint how many of the participants’ wellbeing was actually affected by type 2 diabetes, it did show that for every additional 100 grams of sugar per 2,000 daily calories, people had a 45% higher risk of the disease. This may sound like a lot of sugar, but research dietician Heidi Silver, of Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville, who was not involved in the new study, says, ‘It’s easy to get more than 100 grams, especially if you’re not being careful to choose the right kinds of foods.’
So what are the ‘right kinds of foods’ on the glycaemic scale? Fish, meat, high-fibre fruits and vegetables, nuts, cheeses and other dairy products, brown rice and other unrefined grains are considered low-glycaemic foods. The researchers said that the general public need to better understand what high-glycaemic and low-glycaemic mean, and how to figure out their glucose intake.
Clinical dietician Kari Kooi of Methodist Hospital in Houston, who was not involved in the study, explains that there’s a ‘jungle of information and misinformation out there. For instance, fibre (in pre-packaged energy) bars is not the same thing as natural fibre you get in fruits and vegetables. That’s deceptive to consumers, who also may not realize that just having fibre…doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as being low-glycaemic.’
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