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| Don't worry, you don't have to eat veggies only for the rest of your life, but you should never eat a meal without them! |
I've been writing about the "add fat to your carbs to ameliorate the obesogenic insulin response" bullsh*t before (see "True or False? Adding Fat to A Carby Meal Lowers Insulin Response. Muscle Hypertrophy Impairs Oxygen Diffusion. Reducing Carb Intake Improve Muscular Insulin Sensitivity" |
read more). What I have not been writing about before are better alternatives. Alternatives such as a huge bowl of veggies. A bowl like the one the participants in a recent study from the
Graduate School of Human Sciences and Design at
the Japan Women’s University in Tokyo consumed as an adjunct to a standardized white rice meal.
Add veggies to your rice!
Basically, the scientists tested four different conditions. In condition (S), the participants consumed only the staple food (boiled white rice weighing 200 g heated in a microwave oven for 2 min). In condition (SM), the participants consumed the staple food (rice) and a main dish, in this case a boiled egg and tofu (soyabean curd). The third condition (SMF) was the same staple bowl of rice and main dish, but this time "enhanced" with an extra serving of fat from delicious mayonnaise.
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| Table 1: Overview of the composition of the test meals (Kameyama. 2014) |
On the last out of four testing occasions, the normal-weight male study participants with an age between 30 and 49 years consumed the same high fat meal (SMF), but this time with an additional vegetable dish (SMFV) consisted of boiled spinach and boiled broccoli.
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| Figure 1: Changes in plasma glucose, insulin, GIP and GLP-1 expressed relative to rice only (Kameyama. 2014) |
In view of the fact that I already gave away the results, I don't think the data in
Figure 1 requires further interpretation, so let me just tell you this: Your mother was - as always - right, when she told you to eat your veggies - if you still don't understand why, it may be time to read up on the fat burning effects of
GLP-1 (spec. "Eat More, Burn More and Lose Fat Like on Crack with GLP-1!?" |
read more) and the role of
GIP in the production and effects of insulin, here at the
SuppVersity.
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| You want more evidence that veggies are healthy - what about those? |
Bottom line: The study at hand provides yet another indisputable argument in favor of having
large serving of vegetables with
every meal. Contrary to common health-junky believe, the latter must not necessarily be spinach or broccoli. Dark leafy veggies are good, and even if they may not reduce your diabetes risk to the same extend ad leafy green ones do, they won't increase it in the way French fries, pizza and the alibi-salad on an Big Mac do... and I bet, variety - which has AFAIK hitherto not been investigated as a factor in type II diabetes, heart disease or stroke, will figure, as well, anyway.
Reference:
- Carter, Patrice, et al. "Fruit and vegetable intake and incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus: systematic review and meta-analysis." BMJ: British Medical Journal 341 (2010).
- Dauchet, Luc, et al. "Fruit and vegetable consumption and risk of coronary heart disease: a meta-analysis of cohort studies." The Journal of nutrition 136.10 (2006): 2588-2593.
- He, Feng J., Caryl A. Nowson, and Graham A. MacGregor. "Fruit and vegetable consumption and stroke: meta-analysis of cohort studies." The Lancet 367.9507 (2006): 320-326.
- Kameyama et al. "Effects of consumption of main and side dishes with white rice on
postprandial glucose, insulin, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide
and glucagon-like peptide-1 responses in healthy Japanese men" British Journal of Nutrition (2014): Ahead of print.
