Determination of the glycaemic index of selected foods (white bread and cereal bars) in healthy persons.

UNLABELLED

The glycaemic index (GI) is a measure of the food power to raise blood glucose (B-glucose) concentration after a meal. For healthy eating, foods with low GI are recommended. However, for many foods in the European Union the GI has not been defined yet. The aims of this prospective open-label study were: (1) to determine the GI of white bread and juicy cereal bars FIT (Usovsko, Czech Republic) by means of the glucometer Optium (Abbott/Medisense); (2) to compare the GI of tested foods determined in the morning and in the evening hours; (3) to compare the GI of tested foods in men and women and (4) to assess the variability of the GI.

METHODS

To determine the GI, measured portions of food containing 50 g of carbohydrates were eaten by 11 healthy volunteers. B-glucose curves were constructed from B-glucose values at time 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 60, 120 min after the meal. The GI was calculated by dividing the incremental area under the curve (IAUC) for the tested food by that for the standard food (IAUCS). In each volunteer each food was tested 5 times so that 5 GI's was obtained and the average was calculated. The GI for each tested food was calculated as the mean from the respective average GI's of the 11 volunteers. MS Excel and the statistical program SPSS v. 10.1 were used to analyze the data.

RESULTS

(1) The mean values of the GI for white bread was 70.3 % and for juicy cereal bars was 101.0 %, as determined in a total of 139 tests in the whole group of 11 volunteers. There was a difference when comparing white bread vs. glucose (p = 0.012) and white bread vs. cereal bars (p = 0.026) but no difference between glucose and cereal bars. (2) There was no significant difference between the GI determined in the morning and in the evening hours either for the total of 139 tests or for the individual tested foods. (3) No significant difference could be seen between the GI in men and women when comparing glucose, cereal bars and white bread. (4) There was a wide variability of GI in all tested foods: the standard deviation of GI for white bread was 30.7 %, for juicy cereal bars 38.0 %.

CONCLUSIONS

The GI's for white bread and juicy cereal bars were determined. There was no difference either between the GI values determined in the morning vs. the evening hours or between the values in men vs. women. The results show wide variability. An accurate standard method for the determination of GI needs to be defined, carefully used and re-evaluated to enable a comparison of the results with various methods of other working groups.