Anthony Almada, B.Sc.07.01.06
Consumers create trends and marketers create fads-one perspective on the difference between these two forces that discerns the origins of inertia and those that add velocity. In the post-Atkins world many of the pundits have heralded and forecasted the glycemic index as the meritorious ascendant to the throne of the food and diet kingdom. But where art thou other force, absent and perhaps essential, which transports the flux of energy from marketer to money-spending consumer-the factor that makes the kingdom rich and all the minions beholden?
The first diet fad that left an indelible mark on me was the Beverly Hills Diet 25 years ago. Its claimed author had neither medical, nor relevant science training but the book's publisher and publicist had marketing savvy. The natural foods store I was working at prized its presence on the bookshelf section-it was a catalog prescribing fruit-centric meals, fresh and blueberry-laden-and all of these sweet specimens were within eyeshot and even noseshot of the customer from within the produce section. Some of the book's disciples would even undergo shapeshifting, entering the store one week large and seemingly desperate and in a period of a few to several weeks, returning as moderate to even small and exuberant. They had traversed the divide of food to fitter: the force of weight loss was with them.
Weight loss is the essential force, the life force of a Designer Diet, one that achieves the status of cocktail party and gym/health club buzz. For the glycemic index, its premise is metabolism-centric, by definition. Like a round of golf, the objective is to select and ingest snacks, foods, and beverages that have lower glycemic index values, and meals with a lower glycemic load (lower carbohydrate content, as glycemic load = glycemic index score X amount of carbohydrates). But we haven't heard the glycemic zealots extolling the striking, rapid weight and fat loss a l Atkins. We haven't seen the headlines proclaiming such from a continuum of new clinical studies. We fail to see the infomercial-worthy before and after pictures in real life, among those that pull low glycemic loads.
The evidence base from clinical trials, with duration of even up to one year, is equivocal or even discouraging when placed against a backdrop of asserting superior weight loss and even superior metabolic benefit. The origins of this description-which went public 25 years ago (Jenkins et al., Am J Clin Nutr, 1981)-were not centered in weight loss but in a systematic attempt to describe the varying excursions of blood sugar after certain foods were consumed. What this seminal study revealed, and what has been since interpreted by many-even health professionals-remains less than congruent. The glycemic index dogma dictates that a food achieves its low glycemic status and score by resulting from a slower rate of digestion or absorption. When one searches for human studies that definitively and directly investigate this ostensibly plausible hypothesis one finds only a single study, which is heretical (Schenk et al., Am J Clin Nutr, 2003). Two different commercial cereals with dramatically different glycemic index scores demonstrated superimposable rates of glucose absorption, yet differed dramatically by how much insulin was released during the first 30 minutes (twice as much for the low glycemic index, ultra high fiber cereal). Indeed, the low glycemic index cereal had more sugar and protein per test serving, a potent combo for raising insulin. This served as the force that caused a more rapid exit of glucose entering the blood. Net result: lower glycemic index value. Moreover, protein alone is almost as potent as carbohydrate at raising blood insulin, much to the chagrin and disbelief of protein pushers.
What does this portend for low glycemic's legacy? We have seen numerous companies embrace the low glycemic "brand"-including one national chain of pre-packaged foods sold through weight loss clinics. One can find a few companies that offer packaged foods and sweeteners that have earned a clinical research validated numerical moniker of low glycemic index. And one can find increasing numbers of products that have never been confirmed (through a clinical study) to be low glycemic, with the associated number attached.
Australia and Canada are home to the low glycemic research icons, and both have spawned consumer books exhorting the masses to "live low," and even lose weight doing so. Perhaps the proprietary strategy is to create an axial suite of foods, snacks and beverages that are clinical research-confirmed low glycemic index, build a diet/lifestyle around them, and then show that their incorporation works for weight and fat loss-better than any other diet, both for aesthetics and metabolic health.NW
***
Disclosure: Mr. Almada is on the board of directors of New Era, marketers of Solo Gi bars, and is a partner in LevInova, Inc., marketers of Zsweet.
The first diet fad that left an indelible mark on me was the Beverly Hills Diet 25 years ago. Its claimed author had neither medical, nor relevant science training but the book's publisher and publicist had marketing savvy. The natural foods store I was working at prized its presence on the bookshelf section-it was a catalog prescribing fruit-centric meals, fresh and blueberry-laden-and all of these sweet specimens were within eyeshot and even noseshot of the customer from within the produce section. Some of the book's disciples would even undergo shapeshifting, entering the store one week large and seemingly desperate and in a period of a few to several weeks, returning as moderate to even small and exuberant. They had traversed the divide of food to fitter: the force of weight loss was with them.
Weight loss is the essential force, the life force of a Designer Diet, one that achieves the status of cocktail party and gym/health club buzz. For the glycemic index, its premise is metabolism-centric, by definition. Like a round of golf, the objective is to select and ingest snacks, foods, and beverages that have lower glycemic index values, and meals with a lower glycemic load (lower carbohydrate content, as glycemic load = glycemic index score X amount of carbohydrates). But we haven't heard the glycemic zealots extolling the striking, rapid weight and fat loss a l Atkins. We haven't seen the headlines proclaiming such from a continuum of new clinical studies. We fail to see the infomercial-worthy before and after pictures in real life, among those that pull low glycemic loads.
The evidence base from clinical trials, with duration of even up to one year, is equivocal or even discouraging when placed against a backdrop of asserting superior weight loss and even superior metabolic benefit. The origins of this description-which went public 25 years ago (Jenkins et al., Am J Clin Nutr, 1981)-were not centered in weight loss but in a systematic attempt to describe the varying excursions of blood sugar after certain foods were consumed. What this seminal study revealed, and what has been since interpreted by many-even health professionals-remains less than congruent. The glycemic index dogma dictates that a food achieves its low glycemic status and score by resulting from a slower rate of digestion or absorption. When one searches for human studies that definitively and directly investigate this ostensibly plausible hypothesis one finds only a single study, which is heretical (Schenk et al., Am J Clin Nutr, 2003). Two different commercial cereals with dramatically different glycemic index scores demonstrated superimposable rates of glucose absorption, yet differed dramatically by how much insulin was released during the first 30 minutes (twice as much for the low glycemic index, ultra high fiber cereal). Indeed, the low glycemic index cereal had more sugar and protein per test serving, a potent combo for raising insulin. This served as the force that caused a more rapid exit of glucose entering the blood. Net result: lower glycemic index value. Moreover, protein alone is almost as potent as carbohydrate at raising blood insulin, much to the chagrin and disbelief of protein pushers.
What does this portend for low glycemic's legacy? We have seen numerous companies embrace the low glycemic "brand"-including one national chain of pre-packaged foods sold through weight loss clinics. One can find a few companies that offer packaged foods and sweeteners that have earned a clinical research validated numerical moniker of low glycemic index. And one can find increasing numbers of products that have never been confirmed (through a clinical study) to be low glycemic, with the associated number attached.
Australia and Canada are home to the low glycemic research icons, and both have spawned consumer books exhorting the masses to "live low," and even lose weight doing so. Perhaps the proprietary strategy is to create an axial suite of foods, snacks and beverages that are clinical research-confirmed low glycemic index, build a diet/lifestyle around them, and then show that their incorporation works for weight and fat loss-better than any other diet, both for aesthetics and metabolic health.NW
***
Disclosure: Mr. Almada is on the board of directors of New Era, marketers of Solo Gi bars, and is a partner in LevInova, Inc., marketers of Zsweet.