[The effect of the ingestion of nougat on blood glucose and insulin in healthy subjects].
The importance of the treatment of diabetes mellitus in the diet, is well known. Given that the glycemic response of the foods can not be predicted simply based on their chemical composition, prior to advising diabetics, one must have comparative data on the physiologic effects of the different foods. In this work we have studied the effect of nougat on glycemia and insulinemia, because this is a common food in our culture, and its knowledge may be of great use to diabetic patients. For the study we chose 7 healthy volunteers who were asked to ingest, on different days, a portion of whole wheat bread and one of Jijona nougat with an equivalent number of carbohydrates, and blood samples were taken before breakfast and at different times after initiating the ingestion, and in these samples we determined the plasma concentrations of glucose and insulin. We calculated the peak distances of glycemia and insulinemia, that is to say, the differences between the minimum and maximum values, and the areas under the curves. The difference between the glycemia peak distance between the trial done with nougat and that done with whole wheat bread, was statistically significant with a p < 0.02. The area under both curves did not show statistically significant differences. The same was true for the insulinemia figures. In conclusion, nougat, which traditionally is banned from the diet of diabetics, in this study does not show to produce a greater functional overload of the pancreatic islets than whole wheat bread does, and, although it has a high caloric value, it can probably be added to the diet of diabetic in small quantities, without producing great metabolic alterations.
Riestra
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Sección de Endocrinología, Hospital Universitario Valdecilla, Santander, España.
Cubas
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Amado
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D000328:Adult; D001786:Blood Glucose / Q000032:analysis*; D001939:Bread / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002182:Candy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003927:Diet, Diabetic; D005215:Fasting / Q000097:blood; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007328:Insulin / Q000097:blood*; D008297:Male; D012016:Reference Values; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013997:Time Factors
D001786:Blood Glucose; D007328:Insulin