Dietary Modifications and Insulin Sensitivity
The modest success of low-fat diets has prompted research on alternative strategies, including low-glycaemic-index (GI) diets. Conventional high-carbohydrate diets increase postprandial glucose and insulin concentrations and may compromise fat oxidation, fuel partitioning and metabolic flexibility. Increasing the GI of foods has been independently linked to higher prevalence of IR in observational studies, whereas low-GI diets improved whole-body IR in patients with T2DM. However, not all studies show protective effects of low-GI diets on IR and diabetes risk, and many low-GI diets are also rich in cereal fibre that complicates interpretation of results and separation of effects. In fact, a recent study that claimed superiority of low-GI vs high-cereal-fibre diets provided higher cereal-fibre contents in the low-GI group, again highlighting the difficulties when trying to assess the metabolic effects of single components of complex foods.
Quality of Carbohydrates
The modest success of low-fat diets has prompted research on alternative strategies, including low-glycaemic-index (GI) diets. Conventional high-carbohydrate diets increase postprandial glucose and insulin concentrations and may compromise fat oxidation, fuel partitioning and metabolic flexibility. Increasing the GI of foods has been independently linked to higher prevalence of IR in observational studies, whereas low-GI diets improved whole-body IR in patients with T2DM. However, not all studies show protective effects of low-GI diets on IR and diabetes risk, and many low-GI diets are also rich in cereal fibre that complicates interpretation of results and separation of effects. In fact, a recent study that claimed superiority of low-GI vs high-cereal-fibre diets provided higher cereal-fibre contents in the low-GI group, again highlighting the difficulties when trying to assess the metabolic effects of single components of complex foods.
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