Vrolix R, van Meijl L E C, Mensink R P
Top Institute Food and Nutrition, 6700 AN Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Physiol Behav. 2008 May 23;94(2):293-9. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2007.11.052. Epub 2007 Dec 8.
The metabolic syndrome (MS) is a clustering of metabolic abnormalities that increases the risk to develop chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Although its precise aetiology is unknown, dietary habits play a major role. Nowadays, more and more attention is paid to the glycemic index (GI) and the glycemic load (GL) of a diet. The GI of a food is a value based on the average increase in blood glucose levels occurring when a 50 g carbohydrate portion of that food is consumed. The GL accounts for the amount of carbohydrate per serving. From reviewing the current literature, we conclude that for healthy and/or overweight subjects the importance of low GI or GL diets in relation to the metabolic syndrome has not been established. One of the reasons is that the diets used in the intervention studies frequently not only differed in GI or GL, but also in fibre, protein and/or fat content. In some of the prospective cohort studies, effects of GI or GL attenuated or even disappeared after correcting for fibre intake. This makes it impossible to ascribe the possible beneficial metabolic effects of low GI or GL diets unequivocally to the GI or GL. The question, therefore, remains open on to what components of the metabolic syndrome are specifically affected by the GI per se. To answer this question, controlled longer-term intervention studies are needed to monitor the effects of the GI on the various components of the metabolic syndrome.
代谢综合征（MS）是一组代谢异常的集合，会增加患慢性疾病（如心血管疾病和2型糖尿病）的风险。尽管其确切病因尚不清楚，但饮食习惯起着主要作用。如今，人们越来越关注饮食的血糖生成指数（GI）和血糖负荷（GL）。食物的GI是基于食用50克该食物碳水化合物部分时血糖水平的平均升高值。GL则考虑了每份食物中的碳水化合物含量。通过回顾当前文献，我们得出结论，对于健康和/或超重受试者而言，低GI或GL饮食与代谢综合征之间的关系尚未明确。原因之一是干预研究中使用的饮食不仅在GI或GL上经常不同，而且在纤维、蛋白质和/或脂肪含量上也存在差异。在一些前瞻性队列研究中，校正纤维摄入量后，GI或GL的影响减弱甚至消失。这使得无法明确地将低GI或GL饮食可能产生的有益代谢作用归因于GI或GL。因此，关于代谢综合征的哪些成分会受到GI本身的具体影响这一问题仍然悬而未决。为了回答这个问题，需要进行长期对照干预研究来监测GI对代谢综合征各个成分的影响。
