Jon Senior <jon_AT_restlesslemon_DOTco_DOT_uk> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:James Annan [email hidden] opined the following...
Quoted message said:So can you ask your mother's doctor or your university professor how the
high glycaemic index of bread and potatoes (complex starch) can be an
improvement on sucrose with its medium glycaemic index?
I can answer those myself... and I hope you could too. Ignoring the
validity of their research for the minute (I am naturally cynical of an
organisation that claims to be scientific, but is promoting their GI
weight-loss recipe book!):
WTF is this about? I mentioned no "organisation", and the info I
quoted is available from a number of apparently trustworthy and
independent sources including www.diabetes.org.uk and www.bupa.co.uk.
I do not believe that it is in the slightest bit controversial, and
challenge you to find any reputable source that disputes any of it.
Quoted message said:White bread contains little or no fibre (Which you may recall I included
in my advice) and is near enough pure starch.
So what? If "pure starch" isn't a complex carbohydrate, then what the
hell is? Wholegrain bread also has a high GI. Sucrose is medium.
Quoted message said:The potatoes that are listed in the GI website's database are potato
dumblings (Gnocchi) and have been processed to hell and back before
cooking.
Nice straw man, but baked potatoes have a high GI. Sucrose is medium.
Quoted message said:Brown bread (Pumpernickel because their DB is somewhat incomplete!) has
a far lower GI than white bread.
If your advice is that a hungry cyclist should stuff their gut with
pumpernickel bread in the hope of some energy gain 2 hours down the
road then I consider that very poor advice indeed. A much more
sensible alternative would be to eat a few jelly babies now, and then
a few more after an hour or two. Anyone with any experience of hard
long-distance cycling will confirm that stuffing down enough food is
an important part of the plan, and the sooner it is digested and out
of the way of the next mouthful, the better. Performance may not be so
important for the leisure cyclist, but it is still worth understanding
what will do most to aid performance.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:In what way is sucrose worse than baked beans
Which include a sweet, sugar based tomato sauce.
And yet are still suggested by diabetes.org.uk as a topping for a
baked potato in order to _lower_ the GI!
Quoted message said:
Quoted message said:crisps
Often flavoured with sugar based flavourings and consisting of heavily
processed starch.
Quoted message said:or pasta
Also consisting of heavily processed starch.
Pretty impressive straw-clutching there. There are plenty more
"complex carbohydrate" examples with higher GI than sucrose. How about
chips, or a boiled parsnip? Not that you or anyone else has actually
demonstrated that high GI food is bad for a hungry cyclist. If
anything, the truth is the precise opposite of what you claim: bread
and potatoes may be better foodstuffs because the energy is made
available MORE RAPIDLY than for some sugar-based snacks.
Quoted message said:I've read through the GI website
and their claims as to what they measure, but they don't really offer
enough detail. They appear to measure the speed at which blood sugar
levels rise. This is not the problem though. The problem is the speed at
which they then fall afterward.
Definition of the Glycaemic Index
The GI of a food is defined as the size of the area under the blood
glucose graph after eating a portion of the food in question which
will supply 50g of carbohydrate, divided by the size of the area under
the blood glucose graph caused by eating 50g of glucose.
Quoted message said:Simple sugars produce a rapid rise to a
peak and then an equally rapid fall until the body manages to reattain
balance. Complex carbs (In a natural form) produce a slower (but still
fast) rise, followed by a steady fall.
What is your basis for this claim? How does it fool the GI
calculation? Are you asserting that GI is not a useful measure, and if
so, have you a better one (that diabetes.org.uk has apparently not
heard of)?
Quoted message said:You're a scientist are you not? I find it mildly disturbing that you
take this stuff to heart without questioning it all.
I question a lot of things, which is why I looked into the apparent
conflict between GI and the commonly-stated but apparently naive
advice of "sugar bad, complex carbs good". When you parrotted out the
same old saw, I questioned whether you had any basis for it, and it
seems again that it is just a misunderstood 3rd-hand old wives' tale
with little basis in fact. I find it mildly disturbing that you go off
on some tangential rant about a conspiracy theory concerining some
unspecified website, when I question the basis for your unfounded
claims.
Regular consumption of high-GI snacks is undoubtedly the best strategy
for a long-distance cyclist/runner. That may indeed include some
"complex carbohydrates", but for precisely the opposite reasons to the
ones you claim.
James
