Source: Diabetes Care  |  Posted 9 years ago

A low-glycaemic index diet could benefit healthy, slightly overweight non-diabetic men and might help to prevent metabolic diseases and their cardiovascular complications.

Researchers in Paris, Lyon and Le Plessis Robinson, France, report that five weeks of the diet reduced total fat mass, improved plasma lipid profiles and tended to increase lean body mass without changing body weight. At the same time, the expression of some genes implicated in lipid metabolism decreased.

The researchers randomly allocated 11 healthy men to five weeks on either a low or high glycaemic index diet, and switched them to the alternative diet after a five-week washout.

The low-glycaemic index diet resulted in lower postprandial plasma glucose, insulin profiles and areas under the curve than the high glycaemic index diet. The low-glycaemic index diet lowered plasma triacylglycerol excursion after lunch significantly more than the high glycaemic index diet.

These changes were associated with approximately a 700 gram loss of total fat mass and a significant tendency to increase lean body mass without any change in body weight.

The decline in fat mass was accompanied by significant falls in leptin, lipoprotein lipase and hormone-sensitive lipase RNAm quantities in subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue.