"glycemic index" news and stories

Food manufacturers are always looking for ways to improve the nutritional content of their products, as well as ways to lower the calories. Scientists may have found a new way to do just that with an innovative new ingredient: banana flour.

They've developed a flour from unripe bananas, and adding it to pasta has been one of the first applications. Pasta makers have experimented with adding other ingredients, but everything they've tried so far makes the pasta shrink too much when it's cooked. Banana flour, on the other hand, doesn't seem to cause any additional shrinkage.

The banana flour looks promising for manufacturers. Not only does the new flour add antioxidants and tannins for a nutritional boost, it also boosts the amount of resistant starch by 12%. That allows the potential pasta to claim to be a lower glycemic index food because the resistant starch is not digestible and works in your system like insoluble fiber.

The pasta makers say that the results they've gotten with the banana flour yield a good quality product but that more testing is required regarding the taste of the product. So you may see banana flour as an ingredient in the future, but it may take a while for it to get there.

According to Australian researchers, a high carbohydrate, low-GI diet is the best for weight loss and for cardiovascular health. At least, they produced better results than the high-protein diets that they were compared to in an intensive 12-week study - the first study in the world to directly compare the two types of diets and their impact on health and weight/weight loss.

Over 120 women classified as overweight or obese participated in the study and were assigned to one of four (reduced calorie) diets: high protein/ low GI, high protein/high GI, high carbohydrate/log GI, high carbohydrate/high GI. The high carb dieters showed the most weight loss, but lowering the GI of that high carb diet doubled fat loss. Low GI coupled with high protein was the better of the two protein diet choices. Low GI also led to lower risk factors for heart disease, including having a lowering effect on the levels of LDL cholesterol.

The Glycemic Index ranks foods based on how they affect blood sugar levels. Low GI foods cause a slight increase, while high GI foods will cause a sharp spike. Low GI foods include oats, bran, apples, pears, peas, milk and yogurt.

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