THE OKINAWAN DIET: JAPANESE EQUIVALENT TO THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET
While the Mediterranean diet (Med-diet) is healthy and enjoyable for many, the eating pattern may not be ideal for everyone for a variety of reasons, including, importantly, food culture and traditional food preferences. People living in South-East Asia, for example, have traditionally enjoyed low fat, high carbohydrate eating patterns for millennia, and switching to a …
TYPE 2 DIABETES AND RISK OF CANCER
Most people with diabetes already know they have a higher risk of premature death, mainly due to their increased risk of cardiovascular disease (e.g., heart disease, stroke and peripheral vascular disease). There is also some evidence that people with diabetes have an increased risk of developing and dying from certain forms of cancer. However, it …
DIET AND CANCER
Cancer is a generic term for a group of diseases that can affect essentially any part of the body. Other terms commonly used are malignant tumours and neoplasms. A defining feature of cancer is the rapid creation of abnormal cells that grow beyond their usual boundaries, and which can then invade adjoining parts of the …
ENERGY BALANCE AND CONTROL OF BODY WEIGHT
As most people are aware, rates of overweight and obesity are increasing all around the world. In 2016, the World Health Organization estimated that 39% of the world’s adults were overweight and 13% were obese, or in other words, more than half (52%) the world’s adult population was overweight or obese. Excess energy from foods …
THE THERMIC EFFECT OF FOOD
Weight gain, whether intentional or not, generally occurs over long periods of time, as habitual energy intake exceeds our bodies’ requirements. Because the process for most of us is a relatively slow one (e.g., on average 0.5 kg or 1.1 pounds per year), factors that influence energy balance, even modestly, may be clinically important over …
GLYCEMIC LOAD AND DIABETES
People have long known that, compared to the other major nutrients protein and fat, the amount and type of carbohydrate that we eat or drink has the most pronounced effect on blood glucose levels in people with diabetes. Before the glycemic index (GI) was conceived, people with diabetes predominantly counted carbohydrate using carbohydrate exchanges (15 …
HOW TO ENJOY A MODERATE GLYCEMIC LOAD DIET
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GI NEWS – SEPTEMBER 2021
GI News is published online by the University of Sydney, School of Life and Environmental Sciences and the Charles Perkins Centre, and delivered to the mailboxes of our 98,000 subscribers. Our goal is to help people choose the high-quality carbs that are digested at a rate that our bodies can comfortably accommodate and to share …
THE DEMONISATION OF SUGAR
Fifty years ago, sugar was a good in anybody’s language. Sweetness was equivalent to goodness and Sweetheart was a name we called our closest loved ones. In the 1970s, as a student of food science and technology, I learned how refined sugar (sucrose) was an important preservative, a flavour enhancer in small amounts, and an …
FRUIT, ADDED SUGARS AND CARDIOMETABOLIC RISK
With few exceptions, whole fruit is a good source of vitamins (e.g., A, B and C), minerals (e.g., magnesium and potassium), antioxidants (e.g., flavonoids and phenolic acids) and dietary fibre (e.g., cellulose and pectins), and has a relatively low energy density. It is therefore probably not a surprise to read that regular fruit consumption has …
