Low-glycemic diet beats low-fat diet for heart disease and diabetes prevention

Low glycemic carbohydrates actually help regulate your blood sugar, instead of throwing it off by having your body produce too much insulin as your food is absorbed through the small intestine.

• It cuts risk factors for heart disease and diabetes better than conventional low-fat diet, researchers say.
• A diet rich in the type of carbohydrates that maintain a more stable blood sugar beats out a conventional low-fat diet in reducing the risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, according to a new study.
• Researchers compared a diet rich in carbohydrates with a low glycemic index -- the type that stabilizes blood sugar -- with a conventional low-fat diet that included carbohydrates with a high glycemic index.
• The work by Pereira and his team appears in the Nov. 24 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
• In the study, those on the low-glycemic diets also achieved better improvement in blood pressure and blood fats, and their resting metabolic rate -- the rate at which the body burns energy or calories at rest -- didn't drop as much as it did for those on the low-fat diet.
• The low-glycemic diet got 43 percent of calories from carbohydrates, 27 percent from protein, and 30 percent from fat, Pereira said.
• (For the sake of comparison, the popular Zone diet consists of 40 percent of calories from protein, 30 percent from carbohydrates, and 30 percent from fat. Low-glycemic carbohydrates are recommended.)
• Pereira's team measured blood pressure, insulin resistance (a predictor of diabetes), blood fats and other risk factors for diabetes and heart disease, before and after the weight loss.
• "I think it's a very interesting study," said Alice Lichtenstein, a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association and professor of nutrition, science, and policy at Tufts University.
• She's referring to the fact that the low-glycemic menus allowed more fat -- about 30 percent -- than the low-fat, which allowed 18 percent fat.