<story><title>An Insulin Index of Foods (1994)</title><url>https://fermatslibrary.com/s/an-insulin-index-of-foods-the-insulin-demand-generated-by-1000-kj-portions-of-common-foods#email-newsletter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wdewind</author><text>This actually makes a ton of sense and is what people on the sidelines of the insulin debate have been screaming since Gary Taubes starting publishing his work about dietary sugar.  Unfortunately it&amp;#x27;s given people a very non-nuanced view of the science.&lt;p&gt;The problem is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; dietary sugar, it is blood sugar levels, which are elevated by many things (including protein and fat), but more than anything by excess calories.  The problem is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; peak blood sugar levels, it is &lt;i&gt;average&lt;/i&gt; blood sugar levels.&lt;p&gt;Edit: to quickly reply to your TLDR edit:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Thus, protein- and fat-rich foods may induce substantial insulin secretion despite producing relatively small bloodglucose responses.&lt;p&gt;This is only true if you completely ignore everything else going on in the body.  Gluconeogenesis is a thing, and just because dietary fat or protein doesn&amp;#x27;t immediately increase blood sugar levels does not mean long term they don&amp;#x27;t.  This stuff can&amp;#x27;t just be looked at as &amp;quot;input&amp;#x2F;output&amp;quot; you have to take into consideration the existing state of the person before the input. &amp;#x2F;edit&lt;p&gt;You can reason about this fairly easily: take a caloric intake of 2000 calories consumed all at once vs in 10 meals over the day.  The all at once crowd gets a huge insulin spike.  Oh no!  Fat storage, right?  Sure, but what happens the rest of the day when there is no dietary input?  Fat burn!  The 10 meals&amp;#x2F;day crowd probably never gets as high blood sugar levels, but also has much higher throughout the day, and accesses fat stores less. But guess what?  Net the body is really pretty good at smoothing this stuff out, it&amp;#x27;s sort of the entire point of fat storage.&lt;p&gt;Where this gets tricky is that high insulin can eventually lead to low blood sugar dips.  People without diabetes can simply wait this out, and the body will start burning fat again and raise the blood sugar.  But this also makes many people &lt;i&gt;feel&lt;/i&gt; hungry, and so they eat more, which raises their average blood sugar levels, and the cycle continues.  Some people have a hard time with this, others do not, but it&amp;#x27;s really important to understand that the insulin is causing people to consume more calories which is causing damage, not the insulin itself.</text></item><item><author>keymone</author><text>&amp;gt; However, some proteinand fat-rich foods (eggs, beef, fish, lentils, cheese, cake, anddoughnuts) induced as much insulin secretion as did some carbohydrate-rich foods (eg, beef was equal to brown rice andfish was equal to grain bread).&lt;p&gt;what? that makes zero sense, at least in case with fat. anybody got quick explanation for this?&lt;p&gt;Edit: found the TLDR explanation in another part of the paper&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; postprandial insulin responses are not always proportional to blood glucose concentrations or to a meal&amp;#x27;s totalcarbohydrate content. Several insulinotropic factors are knownto potentiate the stimulatory effect of glucose and mediatepostprandial insulin secretion. These include fructose, certainamino acids and fatty acids, and gastrointestinal hormones suchas gastric inhibitory peptide, glucagon, and cholecystokiin(25, 26). Thus, protein- and fat-rich foods may induce substantial insulin secretion despite producing relatively small bloodglucose responses.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>avinium</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m experimenting with IF&amp;#x2F;keto at the moment, mainly to see if it helps put on lean muscle. For context, I&amp;#x27;ve also been eating relatively clean (low carb, high protein&amp;#x2F;fibre) for years now.&lt;p&gt;I take all the internet commentary about low insulin levels (etc) with a grain of salt. I just don&amp;#x27;t know enough about endocrinology or the current state of research.&lt;p&gt;That being said, higher carbohydrate intake causes a noticeable spike in how hungry I feel. If I have a moderately carb-heavy dinner (50-100g), I&amp;#x27;m ravenous when I wake up, and mentally I&amp;#x27;m a lot fuzzier.&lt;p&gt;Then, like clockwork, they both disappear around 3pm, which I assume coincides with the switch over from metabolizing glycogen to fatty acids.&lt;p&gt;If I keep carbs under 20g, I&amp;#x27;m fine from the moment I wake up. I have mild sensations of hunger later in the day, but nothing like the pangs I get on the higher carb diet.&lt;p&gt;This seems to be well documented, and most people on the keto diet report similar experiences.&lt;p&gt;Do you think this hormonal response has no impact on weight loss (or, for that matter, muscle gain)?</text></comment>
<story><title>An Insulin Index of Foods (1994)</title><url>https://fermatslibrary.com/s/an-insulin-index-of-foods-the-insulin-demand-generated-by-1000-kj-portions-of-common-foods#email-newsletter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wdewind</author><text>This actually makes a ton of sense and is what people on the sidelines of the insulin debate have been screaming since Gary Taubes starting publishing his work about dietary sugar.  Unfortunately it&amp;#x27;s given people a very non-nuanced view of the science.&lt;p&gt;The problem is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; dietary sugar, it is blood sugar levels, which are elevated by many things (including protein and fat), but more than anything by excess calories.  The problem is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; peak blood sugar levels, it is &lt;i&gt;average&lt;/i&gt; blood sugar levels.&lt;p&gt;Edit: to quickly reply to your TLDR edit:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Thus, protein- and fat-rich foods may induce substantial insulin secretion despite producing relatively small bloodglucose responses.&lt;p&gt;This is only true if you completely ignore everything else going on in the body.  Gluconeogenesis is a thing, and just because dietary fat or protein doesn&amp;#x27;t immediately increase blood sugar levels does not mean long term they don&amp;#x27;t.  This stuff can&amp;#x27;t just be looked at as &amp;quot;input&amp;#x2F;output&amp;quot; you have to take into consideration the existing state of the person before the input. &amp;#x2F;edit&lt;p&gt;You can reason about this fairly easily: take a caloric intake of 2000 calories consumed all at once vs in 10 meals over the day.  The all at once crowd gets a huge insulin spike.  Oh no!  Fat storage, right?  Sure, but what happens the rest of the day when there is no dietary input?  Fat burn!  The 10 meals&amp;#x2F;day crowd probably never gets as high blood sugar levels, but also has much higher throughout the day, and accesses fat stores less. But guess what?  Net the body is really pretty good at smoothing this stuff out, it&amp;#x27;s sort of the entire point of fat storage.&lt;p&gt;Where this gets tricky is that high insulin can eventually lead to low blood sugar dips.  People without diabetes can simply wait this out, and the body will start burning fat again and raise the blood sugar.  But this also makes many people &lt;i&gt;feel&lt;/i&gt; hungry, and so they eat more, which raises their average blood sugar levels, and the cycle continues.  Some people have a hard time with this, others do not, but it&amp;#x27;s really important to understand that the insulin is causing people to consume more calories which is causing damage, not the insulin itself.</text></item><item><author>keymone</author><text>&amp;gt; However, some proteinand fat-rich foods (eggs, beef, fish, lentils, cheese, cake, anddoughnuts) induced as much insulin secretion as did some carbohydrate-rich foods (eg, beef was equal to brown rice andfish was equal to grain bread).&lt;p&gt;what? that makes zero sense, at least in case with fat. anybody got quick explanation for this?&lt;p&gt;Edit: found the TLDR explanation in another part of the paper&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; postprandial insulin responses are not always proportional to blood glucose concentrations or to a meal&amp;#x27;s totalcarbohydrate content. Several insulinotropic factors are knownto potentiate the stimulatory effect of glucose and mediatepostprandial insulin secretion. These include fructose, certainamino acids and fatty acids, and gastrointestinal hormones suchas gastric inhibitory peptide, glucagon, and cholecystokiin(25, 26). Thus, protein- and fat-rich foods may induce substantial insulin secretion despite producing relatively small bloodglucose responses.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rocgf</author><text>Sorry for the dumb question, but given the total calories are the same, does this mean that it is generally healthier to eat one big meal per day rather than 10 small ones?&lt;p&gt;Given my current understanding from all the intermittent fasting hype lately, it is indeed better to eat big meals rarely rather than small meals frequently.  For some reason, your post got me slightly confused because I lack the necessary knowledge to have a proper model about nutrition in place.</text></comment>