Thursday, December 5, 2013

Is Skipping Breakfast a Good Idea for Type 2 Diabetes?

written by Michael O’Leary

Could you skip breakfast and eat a large midday meal instead to get better control of your blood sugar?

That’s what a group of Swedish researchers wanted to know. They compared consuming a large Mediterranean style lunch with low-fat and low-carb meals among people with type 2 diabetes. 

The Mediterranean diet, which the International Diabetes Federation says emphasizes fruit, vegetables, beans, legumes, and nuts, has been credited with lowering heart disease, improving mental function and increasing life span among the obese, according to the Mayo Clinic. (published archive)

“It is surprising how often one today refers to the usefulness of the so-called Mediterranean diet but forgets that it also traditionally meant the absence of a breakfast,” Professor Fredrik Nystrom principal investigator of the study said in a press release.

The small study of 19 people with type 2 diabetes published Nov. 27, 2013 in PLoS One, showed that after factoring in the number of calories consumed, a single large midday Mediterranean style meal produced a lower post-meal spike in blood sugar than either a low-fat or low-carb diet.

“This suggests that it is favorable to have a large meal instead of several smaller meals when you have diabetes,” says Nystrom. “Our results give reason to reconsider both nutritional composition and meal arrangements for patients with diabetes.”

The researchers at Linköping Universitet compared the three diets using a method, called a crossover study, in which each of the participants tested all three of the diets in random order during the study period.

The low-fat diet derived 55 percent of the total energy from carbohydrates, while the low-carbohydrate diet derived about 50 percent of total energy from fat and 20 percent from carbohydrates.

The Mediterranean diet was composed of only a cup of black coffee for breakfast, and with all the caloric content corresponding to breakfast and lunch during the other two test days accumulated to one large lunch consumed with a glass of red wine. The energy content from carbohydrates was in between the low-fat and the low-carbohydrate meals, and sources of fat were mainly olives and fatty fish.

Participants waited between one day and up to three weeks between switching diets. Blood tests were performed before and after each meal along with other tests for lipids and hormones. The results were published in the open access journal PLoS One (Public Library of Science) journal.

The results showed that even with double the calories consumed, the Mediterranean meal produced a blood sugar level that was on par with the low-fat meal. While the low-carb diet produced the lowest post meal increase in blood sugar it produced higher levels of triglycerides.

The researchers concluded that this suggests that accumulation of caloric intake from breakfast and lunch into a single large Mediterranean style lunch-meal in type 2 diabetes might be advantageous from a metabolic perspective.

“Our results give reason to reconsider both nutritional composition and meal arrangements for patients with diabetes,” Nystrom said.

Posted at 5th December 2013 by Ryan Luce 

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