Why carbs can turn your liver into foie gras
Posted on 15 February 2008
Published February 15, 2008 . Filed under: Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome, Low-Carbohydrate/Carbohydrate Restriction, Unhealthy Eating!
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I have just read the article in ” GUT” ( available free on their website)
Carbohydrate intake was correlated with rising ALT (a liver enzyme), not with increased fat in the liver, and started returning to normal before the subjects returned to normal diets. They postulate that the raised liver enzyme is not a sign of liver ill health but of enzyme induction by being presented with a large load. Increased fat in the liver which may be a sign of liver disease.was correlated with overall intake of calories,
I think it is a step too far to conclude from this study that carbohydrates alone were responsible for anything other than a clinically insignificant change in a liver enzyme.
February 15, 2008 @ 5:11 pm
Esther
On what basis do you conclude that the rise in ALT levels was ‘clinically insignificant’? The authors themselves state that ‘most participants developed PATHOLOGICAL [emphasis mine] ALT levels during study’
February 15, 2008 @ 5:27 pm
Just a bit of trivia concerning foie gras. Nowadays the geese are stuffed mostly with corn (maize) but historicly in roman times (yes the romans enjoyed already foie gras) figs were used for that purpose. The word foie in french derives from it.
February 15, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
I can’t help but wonder if it was the High Fructose Corn Syrup portion of the carbohydrate intake that was most responsible for the increase in ALT and liver fat, since fructose goes to the liver to be metabolized, unlike glucose. Many fast foods have HFCS as an ingredient: non-diet carbonated beverages, catsup, mayonnaise, etc. The content in a full meal could be quite high.
What alarms me even more is increase in use of agave syrup (or nectar) as a “low-glycemic” and “natural” sweetener by those wishing to avoid HFCS and refined table sugar. Very few seem to realize that agave syrup is as much as 92% fructose, depending on brand, which could put a terrific load on the liver if used liberally. I have seen a huge increase in the availability of bottled agave syrup/nectar and processed food products sweetened with agave syrup at the “natural” and “health” food stores. Additionally, lots of health-oriented bloggers have been indicating they use this “healthy” sweetener, perhaps liberally, since the the low-glycemic factor or “raw” claims give the appearance of being a better sweetener. But I think that claim is questionable, given the extremely high concentrated fructose factor. There is nothing natural about overloading the liver with concentrated fructose.
February 15, 2008 @ 5:57 pm
Does this leave me OK with my breakfast of organic porridge oats (made with goat’s milk), dried fruit, linseeds, a few pumpkin seeds and a dob of borage honey?
If you tell me this is appalling, I’m going to kill myself, if nothing because of the washing up, or the fact that I’d rather eat a bacon butty!! Jeez
Actually I feel great on the above…slow energy release and all that.
February 15, 2008 @ 7:46 pm
Excellent post Dr, as ever.
Over at Hyperlipid,
http://tinyurl.com/2dwf8l
Peter has pointed out that the other interesting thing about the study was that it found that healthy HDL cholesterol actually increased over the four-week period.
It is crazy how this was reported – all the newspapers have said that it proves that fat is bad for you when it says nothing of the sort.
February 15, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
Towards the end of my pregnancy they did some blood tests at the hospital and I had high liver function for a while and they never found out why.
I was on low GI diet before I got pregnant because I have pcos but the diet went out of the window throughout the pregnancy and I had a lot of sweet treats and bready stuff. Maybe thats why my ALTs were off the scale???
February 15, 2008 @ 10:06 pm
[...] som visar att kolhydratrik kost p
February 16, 2008 @ 10:50 am
I am sure Dr Briffa is spot on. On a previous info reference a supressed report re. a cholesterol lowering product – opur GP rang my husband two weeks after I had read the whole report, to tell him to stop taking the drug. He already had.
February 17, 2008 @ 12:41 pm
There are established links between insulin resistance and a fatty liver and excess carbs can lead to insulin resistance. The problem is in establishing what is an excess of carbs and to what degree low GI carbs are ‘safe’.
You still hear dieticians recommending pasta as a key part of a healthy diet. I know someone morbidly obese whose dietician told her to eat pasta and she’s not lost any weight because she eats huge plates of white pasta with sugary processed sauces.
Hmm, can anyone translate post no. 8?
February 18, 2008 @ 2:53 am
Farmers swear that producing Foie Gras isn’t cruel because the geese come running to have the grain poured down their throats. We’re doing the same thing as we enthusiastically stuff all those croissants and cornflakes and pizzas down. I’m guessing it’s down to the feel good sensations that carbs create by producing serotonin in the brain.
February 18, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
Apparently, geese don’t have a ‘gag reflex’ so the force feeding is not so forceful as it would be for a human. Still makes me shudder to look at it, but on the other hand the geese don’t seem too perturbed.
February 18, 2008 @ 8:17 pm
Tiggy, post 8 is from a Swedish lowcarb blog. The text basically says that dr Briffa has commented the study and links to here, nothing more exciting than that…
February 19, 2008 @ 12:24 pm
‘particularly those carbs that tend to cause most disruption in blood sugar and insulin levels including bread, potatoes, rice, pasta and breakfast cereals.’
In your blog you mention rice and pasta as high GI foods. According to Jennie Brand-Miller there are some types of rice, like japanese rice or basmati, that do not have a high GI and pasta does not have a high GI either. I agree that these foods should not form the basis of the diet in the way the ‘nutritional pyramid’ is presented nowadays, but I do not think it is correct to put all these carbs in the same group.
February 22, 2008 @ 2:55 pm
Simona
I’m actually not the bothered about the GI, it’s the glycaemic load (GL) that I believe is more important. And the reality is that because of the quantity in which they tend to be eaten, rice (even basmati, say) and pasta tend to have high GLs.
Plus, the nutritional value of a food is not just determined by a food’s GI/GL, but other things too including the nutrient density of the food. Here, grains (including rice and pasta) come up short, generally speaking, compared to, say, fruits and vegetables (other than the potato).
For these reasons, I believe elevating certain varieties of rice and pasta solely on the basis of their GIs would be quite misleading.
February 22, 2008 @ 3:11 pm
Does glucose have a GL? Or has that not been calculated?
February 24, 2008 @ 6:54 pm
Neil
Not to my knowledge. The GL depends on the size of a ‘portion’ of food, and people don’t eat ‘portions’ of glucose. So I suspect for these reasons, glucose doesn’t have a GL as such.
February 24, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
[...] Dr. Briffa: Why Carbs Can Turn Your Liver into Foie Gras [...]
February 26, 2008 @ 7:37 pm