I was just looking over the insulin index and it would appear as if Fish and Beef, staples of my P+F diet, both score significantly high on the Insulin Index. What is one to do? Obviously the last thing we want is a spike with a fatty meal, so what is the alternative, if any?
what are these gummy fish that are scoring high GI?
How the hell does that happen?
Just not eating carbs gives the body the signals to oxidize fat instead of carbohydrates, regardless of the insulin secreted by a P+F meal. However, because of the insulin released by your last P+C meal, in conjunction with the presence of dietary carbohydrates, this could inhibit the fat from being oxidize. Thus it will store until the body has turned toward fat oxidation. A big question is whether the insulin effect of that P+F meal PROLONGS the body’s tendency toward carbohydrate oxidation established in earlier P+C meals. And is there any supplement or dietary strategy we can take that aids the transition from P+C to P+F?
If there’s a large release of Insulin and no carbohydrates ingested, then blood sugar remains low and insulin levels would not be sustained. So while you ‘lose’ on the high amounts of insulin, it’s for a shortened period of time. Not too much harm done.
That all said, I’m using more logic and reasoning instead of getting my Phys. text out. if anyone has points for clarification, it would be appreciated.
I’m curious to the nature of how the insulin index is obtained.
Now this is only a guess. But I’m thinking that when they are measuring insulin response to a certain food they are doing so from a fasted state. If the person has not eaten for 8+ hours (could be lower) there is going to be significantly higher insulin response.
Akheron, it’s a good point. But as it’s been pointed out with regards to the Glycemic Index before, once you add another protein or fat source to a carbohydrate the glycemic response is significantly dampened.
I guess the take home is that the two Indecies are tools for making better food choices. Still, I can’t claim that as my own revelation. I believe it was talked about in the Carb Roundtable.
It’s all just part of the JMB dogma.
The insulin index measures total insulin released over 2 hours. But insulin sensitivity is also associated with early insulin clearance. Thus when a food peaks is also an issue, the earlier the better, and low GI foods tend to peak earlier. However, I read one study which showed that in people with impaired glucose tolerance, low GI foods released greater insulin over 4 hours than higher GI foods. It stands to reason that the peak value was lower, and that it peaked earlier. So it would be nice if there were insulin response studies that measured when insulin peaks, it’s level at 2 hours and then 4 hours… The lower carb diet trend is oversimplifying (i.e. confusing) science in a way that doesn’t help bodybuilders, IMHO.
Akheron, it does measure the foods at breakfast. However, I think even though there is often postprandial hypoglycemia, the insulin response tends to be lower for the first meal of the day.
Note: Based on a PubMed abstract I read and some remarks by Vain68, I’ve started eating a LITTLE bit of fruit first thing in the morning (w/ aminos) and then a high starch P+C meal 30 minutes later. It seems to leave me much more alert after my huge P+C breakfast.
Maybe the body says ooo, there’s something good, I better get that. Notice red meat and fish are high but peanuts are low.