Animal study explores how high GI diets might cause fatty accumulation in the body

Posted on 1 October 2008

One basic nutritional tenet I subscribe to is the idea that the diet should be based on foods that give relatively slow sustained release of sugar into the blood stream. Some of the reason for this thinking comes from the fact that fast sugar-releasing (high glycaemic index) foods will tend to cause surges in the hormone insulin that can predispose individuals to weight gain, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Better stability in blood sugar and insulin is one important way, I believe, to reduce the risk of these major ills.

I was interested to read a study which tested the effects of low and high GI diets in mice. Two groups of mice were fed diets that were the same in macronutrient content (68% carbohydrate, 13% fat and 19% protein). One group of mice ate a diet rich in a form of starch which releases sugar quickly into the blood stream known as amylopectin. The other group of mice ate a diet in which the majority of the starch they ate came from a slower sugar-releasing form of starch known as amylose. The mice were allowed to eat as much food as they wished for a period of up to 40 weeks.

At the end of the study, the weight of the mice in each group was not significantly different.

However, the mice who had eaten the high GI diet had, overall, 40 per cent more body fat.

They also had a greater tendency to

Print This Post