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More Bad News for Sugar Lovers
Posted on May 3rd 2010 12:00PM by Jonny BowdenFiled Under: Jonny's Take, Diet & Weight Loss
Sorry donut lovers. The news on sugary carbs is not getting better. Consuming carbohydrates with a high glycemic index increases the risk of heart disease in women, according to a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
In my book "Living Low Carb: Controlled Carbohydrate Eating for Long-Term Weight Loss," I discuss the meaning of glycemic index. If you haven't read it, here's the executive summary on glycemic index: It's a measure of how quickly food affects your blood sugar.
That's important, because when your blood sugar rises quickly, the pancreas responds by squirting a hormone called insulin into the bloodstream. Insulin's job description includes escorting that excess sugar out of the bloodstream as quickly as possible. When you're not exercising a lot, that sugar winds up in your fat cells which is why insulin is nicknamed "the fat storage hormone."
High glycemic carbs are the ones you want to avoid in your diet. They're the processed carbs and the carbs with high sugar content, such as sodas and desserts. Unfortunately, most grains or grain products (like breads, pastas and the like) are high glycemic, even -- believe it or not -- some of the "whole grain" products on the market. Rice is high glycemic (both brown and white), as are most cereals. All these foods raise blood sugar quickly and keep it up there for a long time, increasing the odds that your insulin levels will also be high -- and that's pretty much a guarantee that you'll put on weight. It's also the reason I so often counsel against high-carb, low-fat diets. (Fat has zero effect on blood sugar and insulin; protein has an effect on blood sugar but not nearly as great an effect as carbs.)
Last week I told you about a study in which added sugar was shown to increase measures of risk for heart disease. This week, there's a different study with even more bad news for high-sugar consumption. In this study, the diets of over 47,000 Italian men and women were evaluated for both carbohydrate intake and for glycemic impact (remember, not all carbs have a high glycemic impact -- almost all vegetables, as well as many fruits, have very low glycemic indexes.)
The women who consumed the most carbohydrates overall -- regardless of whether they were high or low glycemic carbs -- had approximately twice the risk of developing heart disease than the one-fourth who consumed the least amount of carbs. But when the carbs were separated into "high" and "low" glycemic categories, it turned out that the increased risk for heart disease was coming only from the "high" glycemic carbs. Low-glycemic carbs didn't increase the risk for heart disease at all.
Using the glycemic load -- an even better measure of the effect of food on blood sugar -- the researchers found that the quarter of women whose diet had the highest glycemic load had about double the risk of heart disease compared to the women with the lowest glycemic load diet. You can find a complete listing of the glycemic index and glycemic load of every food ever tested here.
High glycemic diets were not found to have the same effect on men in the study, although researchers said more research is needed into how certain foods may be affecting affecting women's risk for heart disease.
This study reinforces what I -- and many of my colleagues -- have been saying for years: Stop worrying so much about fat and start paying attention to carbs. If you consume a reasonable calorie diet (target weight multiplied by 10-11 for a good calorie goal), and get most of your carbs from low-glycemic vegetables and fruits, the percentage of fat in the diet doesn't matter nearly as much as you might think.
But clearly the amount of carbs -- especially high-glycemic ones -- matters a lot, both for the state of your waistline and for the health of your heart.
Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life. You can visit his Web site to learn more.
