On Fri, 09 Apr 2004 17:18:02 GMT, Robert Klute
<
[email protected]> posted:
>On Thu, 01 Apr 2004 21:27:29 +0800, "Moosh
"
><
[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 21:12:19 GMT, Robert Klute
>><
[email protected]> posted:
>>
>>>On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 17:41:13 +0800, "Moosh
"
>>><
[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Fri, 26 Mar 2004 19:40:21 GMT, Robert Klute
>>>><
[email protected]> posted:
>>>>
>>>>>They can feel full longer with fewer overall calories
>>>>>consumed and thus have a better chance of not
>>>>>'cheating'.
>>>>
>>>>Yep. Spuds in the diet. Wholefoods take much longer to
>>>>digest and to leave the stomach.
>>>
>>>Potatoes have a high glycemic index.
>>
>>Yep, higher than table sugar. But if you eat them in a
>>very mixed diet, this high GI is levelled out.
>>
>
>From an interview with Walter Willett, MD. Professor
>of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard School of
>Public Health.
>
>
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/diet/intervi-
>ews/willett.html
>
>Q: Traditionally people think of carbohydrates as made up
> of simple sugars and complex starches. What's wrong
> about that?
>
>W: Right. The thinking in nutrition about carbohydrates
> really had broken them down into two classes: sugars and
> so-called complex carbohydrates, which are mostly
> starches. ... The idea has been pushed that all forms of
> so-called complex carbohydrates are really the poster
> child of nutrients, and we should be eating them in
> large amounts. That's what the pyramid tells us to do.
> But in fact, these kinds of starches -- white bread,
> white rice, potatoes -- are starches that are very
> rapidly converted to glucose, really pure sugar, and
> almost instantly absorbed into the bloodstream. And
> these are the kinds of carbohydrates that we really
> should be minimizing in our diets.
>
>
>Q: A sugar rush from a potato?
>
>W: Actually, careful studies have shown, demonstrated that
> you get a bigger rise in blood sugar after eating
> potatoes, a baked potato, say, than you do from eating
> pure table sugar.
>
>
>Q: That seems pretty extreme. Why is that?
>
>W: ... There are several problems with these rapid rises in
> blood glucose after you ingest large amounts of a
> rapidly digested form of carbohydrate. First of all,
> when the blood sugar goes skyrocketing up, the body
> wants to bring it back down. So our pancreas pumps out a
> big blast of insulin, and as a result, the blood sugar
> comes crashing down rapidly. In fact, in many people,
> after three and four hours, it overshoots and actually
> become a little hypoglycemic, and that rapid crashing
> down of blood glucose and insulin stimulates hunger.
> That would be no problem, except that it's often all too
> easy to go in the refrigerator or find a snack, and if
> we do that frequently throughout the day, that can add
> up to too many calories over weeks and months and years,
> and contribute to obesity.
>
>Second, these high rises in blood glucose and insulin have
>a bad metabolic effect on the blood cholesterol fractions.
>Specifically the HDL, the good cholesterol, is driven down,
>and triglycerides, another type of fat in the blood that
>leads to heart attacks, goes up.
>
>Third, after many years of demand for high amounts of
>insulin, the pancreas tends to give out. And at that point
>in time, we've got type 2 diabetes.
>
>
>Q: [What is the role of insulin?]
>
>W: The role of insulin is to transport glucose from the
> blood into the cells, like into muscle or into fat
> cells.
>
>
>Q: What can go wrong with this system?
>
>W: Well, the problem really comes about when we develop
> insulin resistance. And that means that the cells, like
> the muscle cells, become more resistant to the action of
> insulin transporting the glucose inside the cell. And we
> can become insulin-resistant in several different ways.
> There's some genetic component, and as it turns our, for
> example, many Asians tend to have more insulin
> resistance. Also if we have overweight or low levels of
> physical activity, we'll be more insulin resistant.
>
>
>Q: Many people argue the virtues of Asian diets, with a lot
> of white rice.
>
>W: Right. The Asian diet as it's traditionally been used
> raises some very interesting issues in nutrition, in
> fact, some of the most important findings during the
> last several years. What we've come to realize is that
> if we have a higher degree of insulin resistance, then
> we much less well tolerate a high-carbohydrate diet.
>
>Interestingly, in traditional Asian societies, people were
>very lean, very active, and therefore had low insulin
>resistance. They could eat large amounts of rice, even
>white rice, in the diet and have low heart attack rates and
>have low rates of type 2 diabetes. But if you take that
>same person, and they [now] may be living in Beijing and
>driving a car and watching a television, and they put on a
>few pounds, they're going to have much more insulin
>resistance. So if you take that same diet, high in
>carbohydrate and white rice, they will have a much worse
>metabolic response and much higher rates of type 2
>diabetes.
>
>
>Q: If you're American and overweight, won't you be put on a
> low-fat diet?
>
>W: If you're overweight and living in the United States,
> and you go to a hospital and see a dietician, almost for
> sure, you're going to be put on a low-fat, high-
> carbohydrate diet.
>
>
>Q: What's your view of that?
>
>W: The problem is that that's really the wrong diet for an
> overweight person. Because the person is overweight, in
> general they're going to have quite a bit more insulin
> resistance and much less well able to tolerate low-fat,
> high-carbohydrate diet
They may, or they may not. Important to find out. If they
are overweight and "pre-diabetic" they should restrict
carbs. If they are just overweight they should restrict
calories. How they do that with the proviso that they eat a
balanced diet, is not what I'm discussing.
