Energy gels and Insulin response

[Venus62]

Gee, insulin is such a bad, bad hormone that Type 1 diabetics who produce almost no insulin at all must be the healthiest people on the planet!

[casual_cyclist]

Have a read of this link. It has the studies attached.

http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com.au/2008 ... tmeal.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Yeah...

Love this comment on that page:

Poster is mistaken about a few items.

The protein group mean here includes BAKED BEANS, with a gigantic insulin response induced by eating 1000 KJ of baked beans. This is skewing the mean of the protein group up very high. In actuality, dropping baked beans moves the group average for protein items very close to the average for breakfast cereals.

Eggs, cheese, and beef all have low absolute amount of insulin produced per 1000 KJ serving, and have low insulin scores (30-50% of the activity of an equal portion of white bread). Except for baked beans, and fish, their scores are close to the lower end of breakfast cereals.

You cannot use this study to compare the insulin response elicited by foods of normal individuals (all subjects in this paper have a normal glucose tolerance test curve, as clearly stated in the study's introduction) to individuals with abnormal carbohydrate metabolism. If your carbohydrate mechanism is impaired, these values COULD be very different.

The insulin response per gram serving for the protein group is very low for everything except cheese, which has a much higher fat content (and thus is more energetically dense than other items on the list), therefore the weight of a 1000KJ serving of cheese will be significantly less than the weight of servings of the other goods on the list. As the energy density of the food goes up, its total weight per 1000KJ serving will go down, and the insulin response per gram will go up.

It's important to compare the absolute insulin responses; cheese is very moderate of the foods surveyed. Yogurt is very high, and it is known that milk is also elicits high insulin responses. The absolute insulin response of cheese is a little higher than eggs, and less than beef. This blogger should be more responsible with his analysis.

[/quote][/quote]
'nuff said really.

[casual_cyclist]

If you want some actual science on insulin as opposed to a nobody's opinon, good resource here:

http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319

I feel sorry for insulin. Insulin has been bullied and beaten up. It has been cast as an evil hormone that should be shunned. However, insulin doesn’t deserve the treatment it has received.

Insulin: A Primer

Insulin is a hormone that regulates the levels of sugar in your blood. When you eat a meal, the carbohydrate in the meal is broken down into glucose (a sugar used as energy by your cells). The glucose enters your blood. Your pancreas senses the rising glucose and releases insulin. Insulin allows the glucose to enter your liver, muscle, and fat cells. Once your blood glucose starts to come back down, insulin levels come back down too. This cycle happens throughout the day. You eat a meal, glucose goes up, insulin goes up, glucose goes down, and insulin goes down. Insulin levels are typically lowest in the early morning since it’s usually been at least 8 hours after your last meal.

Insulin doesn’t just regulate blood sugar. It has other effects as well. For example, it stimulates your muscles to build new protein (a process called protein synthesis). It also inhibits lipolysis (the breakdown of fat) and stimulates lipogenesis (the creation of fat).

It is the latter effect by which insulin has gotten its bad reputation. Because carbohydrate stimulates your body to release insulin, it has caused some people to argue that a diet high in carbohydrate will cause you to gain fat. Their reasoning, in a nutshell, goes like this:

High Carbohydrate Diet -> High Insulin -> Increased Lipogenesis/Decreased Lipolysis -> Increased Body Fat -> Obesity

Using this same logic, they argue that a low carbohydrate diet is best for fat loss, because insulin levels are kept low. Their logic chain goes something like this:

Low Carbohydrate Diet -> Low Insulin -> Decreased Lipogenesis/Increased Lipolysis -> Decreased Body Fat

However, this logic is based on many myths. Let’s look at many of the myths surrounding insulin.

MYTH:A High Carbohydrate Diet Leads to Chronically High Insulin Levels

FACT:Insulin Is Only Elevated During the Time After a Meal In Healthy Individuals

For more, follow the link: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319