Tune in to our radio show on your local public radio station, or sign up for the podcast and listen at your leisure. Here’s what it’s about:
For years we have been told that all calories are equal. In theory, it doesn’t much matter what we eat, provided we don’t eat too much of it. But new research has called that approach into question. Harvard researchers have found that eating certain foods is associated with weight gain, while choosing other items can be associated with modest weight loss over the years.
Scientists even have a theoretical explanation: most of the foods that seem to promote weight gain cause a quick rise in blood sugar and insulin. Such high glycemic index foods send metabolic signals to our bodies that lead to fat storage.
If you’d like to learn more about following a diet that is low in glycemic index foods, you may want to check out our book, Recipes & Remedies from The People’s Pharmacy.
Guests: Jennie Brand-Miller, PhD, FAIFST, FNSA, holds a personal chair in Human Nutrition in the Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise and Eating Disorders and the School of Molecular Bioscience at the University of Sydney. She is one of the world’s leading authorities on the glycemic index.
Her books include The Diabetes and Pre-diabetes Handbook, The New Glucose Revolution, The Low GI Diet, Low GI Eating Made Easy, The Low GI Guide to Your Heart and Metabolic Syndrome, The Low GI Guide to Managing PCOS and the Low GI Vegetarian Cookbook. Her websites are www.glycemicindex.com and www.gisymbol.com. The photo is of Dr. Brand-Miller.
Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, is Associate Professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. The study on diet and weight gain was published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
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