Researchers get promising results with new diet
Subjects complain meals are not satisfying
Researchers at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have found positive results from a study that contravenes at least some of the current theory on optimum diet for diabetics.
The study shows positive results for a small group of men with mild Type II diabetes who ate a diet high in fruit-based carbohydrates and low in starch despite some controversy about the consequences of diabetics consuming large amounts of fruit.
| Experimental Meal | |
| Patients were fed this identical meal three times a day: | |
| Meal | |
| • ground beef | 100g |
| • milk (2%) | 80g |
| • lettuce | 5g |
| • sliced tomato | 25g |
| • orange sections | 100g |
| • apple | 100g |
| • stewed prunes | 100g |
| • saltine crackers | 6g |
| • American cheese | 30g |
| • butter | 2.5g |
| Bedtime snack | |
| • saltine crackers | 6g |
| • apple | 120-130g |
| • American cheese | 30g |
| • butter | 2.5g |
| Nutritional values of compared meals | |
| Experimental meal: | |
| • 2,052 calories | |
| • carbohydrates | 43% |
| • protein | 22% |
| • fat | 34% |
| American diet: | |
| • 2,098 calories | |
| • carbohydrates | 40% |
| • protein | 20% |
| • fat | 40% |
| Recommended diet: | |
| • 2,052 calories | |
| • carbohydrates | 55% |
| • protein | 15% |
| • fat | 30% |
| Source: Mary Gannon, University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis.
______________________________________ |
|
Composing the diet
Lead author Mary Gannon, PhD, a nutritional biochemist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Minneapolis and associate professor of food science, nutrition, and medicine at the University of Minnesota, says she was interested in discovering if a mixed meal of known monosaccharide, disaccharide, and starch composition would result in only a small rise in plasma glucose concentration. "The intent was to match the meals as closely as possible in calories and to match them with foods where we could incorporate the same foods in each of the three types of meals," she says.
Gannon says her study shows the digestion of the sugars fructose and galactose is unlike the digestion of glucose. Subjects for the study were six mild Type II diabetic men, average age 62, diagnosed from one week to four years prior to the study, and not receiving insulin therapy or oral hypoglycemic agents.
The findings: The high-carbohydrate low-starch diet caused "very little increase in blood glucose concentration through the period of time we were studying it."
The subjects for Gannon’s study were hospitalized for a week to participate in the program. Each subject fasted overnight and an additional eight hours without food ingestion. Then each subject was given each of the three diets included in the test in random order on days 1, 4, and 7: the experimental diet, a typical American diet, and a widely recommended diet for diabetics.
Gannon says, "The intent was to match the menus as closely as possible in calories and to match them with foods where we could incorporate some of the same foods in each of the three types of meals so each subject could serve as his own control. That way we were able to get better statistical power on these and not use as many subjects."
Results showed "essentially no net increase in glucose concentration when compared with the morning fasting value," she says.
Participants were still hungry
However, Gannon says her subjects reported they were still hungry after ingesting the experimental meal, therefore it is unlikely to be acceptable to diabetics as a long-term diet. "I don’t know if people could learn to like the diet," she concludes, although she thinks the diet could be modified for long-term use "if individuals could just cut down on the amount of potential glucose in the diet like starchy foods."
Ardis Beckner, RD, CDE, nutrition educator specialist at Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center and instructor of clinical nutrition at Loma Linda (CA) University, says she thinks Gannon’s results were more likely due to the slightly higher protein content of the diet rather than the presence of different types of sugars.
And she thinks Gannon’s diet could become palatable. "if patients would stick with it for three to five days, they would begin to feel satiated."
"People who would miss the starch would get over it, I think," Beckner adds.
For more information, contact: Mary Gannon, Veterans Administration Medical Center, Minneapolis. Telephone: (612) 725-2000, ext. 2895.
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content