Energy Bars Raising Insulin Levels?

This is an article from Allure magazine, August 2003, page 116 by Christine Palumbo:

ASSESSING ENERGY BARS

Preventing spikes in insulin, a hormone related to metabolism, is though to encourage weight loss. To keep insulin levels down, many people eat low-carbohydrate energy bars. Ohio State University researchers had 20 volunteers try 3 types of bars -- low carb (Atkins Advantage Bar); moderate carb (Balance Bar); and high carb (Power Bar) which is aimed at athletes, not dieters. The subjects also ate two slices of white bread, which is mostly carbohydrates, and a piece of chicken, which contains none.

Blood samples revealed that in comparison to the bread, the high carb bar caused insulin to raise by 75%, while the chicken caused it to drop by 75%.

The Atkins Bar reduced insulin by 26% relative to the bread -- an amount that research nutritionist Steve Hertzler says may not be enough for weight loss.

The Balance Bar, whch reflects the Zone diet's breakdown of 40% carb, 30% fat, 30% protein, actually caused insulin levels to raise about a third more than the bread did.

Hertzler concludes, "I do not think any of the energy bars has any specific advantage over regular food with regard to weight loss, and they may, in fact, harm weight-loss efforts."

[lkmjbc3]

Actually an extremely silly test. Let us do it again shall we....

Let us take 1 grain of sugar vs 45 atkins bars. Whoops, the Atkin's bars raised blood sugar more than the 1 grain of sugar....
All the volunteers died from bloat.

Bad Atkins... Bad...

err. How about we eat 300 calories of Atkins bar vs 300 Calories of white bread(maybe 8-10 slices). Then how about we measure insulin levels at say 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and 1 hour.

I suspect one would get much different results.

lkmjbc3

My take on the test was entirely different. I was surprised that the 'medium' carb bar produced a higher blood sugar result than the 'high' carb bar -- food for thought. I was equally surprised that the chicken would actually drop blood sugar by 75%.

The long term insulin release over the next few hours would be less important to me (if I used LC bars), then the initial sugar spike and subsequent immediate insulin release.

[carbonot]

Thanks Kimmer,
I look forward to your posts. They're always educational.

Keep 'em coming.

[argo2d]

glad i aint ever trusted those things!

[carbonot]

They are the ONLY low carb item that I can find in local stores here so I bought a few of them. Now I'll be waiting till a few more pounds come off before indulge myself in one of those.

You just can't trust anyone to give you the straight truth anymore, even the Atkin's company.

It makes me upset with the LC companies, including Atkins. There are other things in the world besides making a buck!

This is a limited study, but if it's true ... and from the posts of 'stalled' people on this BB who eat them it certainly could be ... that certainly explains a lot of things!

There was a poster a couple years ago who was diabetic and tested her blood sugar. She said her blood sugar skyrocketed after eating either a LC bar or SF candy. Isn't the whole idea behind these products is that they AREN'T supposed to do that?

Scam-a-rama. Think of all the people who buy these products, have a hard time losing weight (surprise, surprise!) and can't figure out why since they think they're doing their program correctly.

[lowcarbfever]

Wow! Thanks so much Kimmer. No wonder why in the past when I endulged in a low carb sweet I would crave more and more... even the ATkins bars. I use to think to myself 'am I THE ONLY person who has suddenly become addicted to sawdust?' haha I will still eat them in the future instead of a regular candy bar, but since I've taken your advice on cutting the lc sweets out all together, I have been losing like mad!! Thank you!


meli

ps I still like sawdust!

[lowcarbfever]

I just happened to see this... very interesting read saying the same thing Kimmer just did.

Should You Count that "Low Impact" Carb?
Every drugstore, supermarket, and department store in the U.S. is filled with snack products that claim to be perfect for the low carb diet. The labels on these products may list 24 grams of carbs but assure you that you only have to count 2 or 3 of these grams in your daily carb allotment. If these make you suspicious, perhaps you prefer the brands that list only a gram or two of carbs in their nutritional information. But a look at their ingredient list almost always shows that glycerine or maltitol are among the major ingredients of these bars too--the same substances reported on the labels of the bars that list 20-some grams of carbs in their nutritional information.

What's Going on Here?
Most of these "low carb" products are sweetened with substances called "sugar alcohols." Maltitol, mannitol, and sorbitol are some of the names of these sweeteners. Despite the name, these aren't sugars or alcohols. They are hydrogenated starch molecules, produced by three large agribusiness companies, SPI Polyols, Roquette America, Inc. and Archer Daniels Midland--a company that having saturated the world with High Fructose Corn Syrup is now looking for new ways to make money out of corn.

These sugar alcohols are metabolized. Each gram of a sugar alcohol turns into 1 to 3 calories rather than the 4 calories that other starches produce. US law requires that they be reported as carbs on food labels and included in calorie counts--though many companies, notoriously those who make chocolate bars and "protein" bars do not report them in their label nutritional information.

The manufacturers of these products claim that they do not raise blood sugar, and hence, because they supposedly have no impact on insulin levels, the manufacturers urge you to ignore them, magically converting foods that have 24 grams of carbs--and the associated calories--into foods with a diet-friendly 3 grams.

If it were true that these foods did not raise blood sugar, it would make them ideal for the low carb diet. However, it is not always true. Some lucky people can eat these low carb treats and still lose weight on a low carb diet. But hundreds of people who have stopped by the alt.support.diet.low-carb news group to ask why their weight loss has stopped cold, find that these foods and the sugar alcohols they contain are the reason for their long-time stalls.

Lying Labels?
Many people with diabetes, who can track blood sugar rises with their glucometers, find that these products cause a significant rise in their blood sugar, contrary to the label claims.
I'm one of them. My blood sugar rises almost as high when I eat a maltitol-sweetened Russell Stover "No Sugar" candy as it does with the regular Russell Stover candy of the same size. The only difference is that it takes two hours for the blood sugar rise to occur when I eat the "no sugar" candy compared to the one hour that it takes when I eat the regular candy. The blood sugar rise is followed by a period of low blood sugar--the hallmark of an insulin response--and the trigger for intense, diet-busting hunger. So much for "truth in labeling."

I am not the only person who has found this to be true. Many other people with diabetes have posted their reports online. Fran McCullough warns readers of the very high blood sugar spikes reported by diabetics after eating the glycerine-containing Atkins bars in her book, Living Low Carb.

Not for Everyone!
However, there are other people with diabetes who report that they don't see a blood sugar rise when they eat foods containing these sugar alcohols. They find these products give them a way to incorporate legitimate treats into their diets and are grateful that they are now so plentiful.

There are also a number of successful low carbers who report in the diet newsgroup that they have been able to lose significant amounts of weight while including these "low carb" treats in their food plans on a daily basis. You will often find them railing against the "puritanism" of those who warn new dieters against them.

Clearly these products do not affect everyone in the same way. For some people they are a godsend. For others, they turn out to be "Stall in a Box."

Why Do Sugar Alcohols Only Affect Some People?
Since it seems that only a subset of the population metabolizes sugar alcohols as sugar, it is quite possible that some people lack some enzyme(s) needed to digest them and turn them into blood sugar. Since those people's bodies can't turn these sugar alcohols into glucose, they do not experience a blood sugar rise when they eat them.

Lending some support to this idea is the fact that some of the people who report that they did not experience a blood sugar rise when they ate a product with a sugar alcohol in it, add that they experienced intense diarrhea or gas later on. These are the classic symptoms of what happens when starches pass undigested into the lower gut where they may be fermented by bacteria (causing gas) or suck water out of the cells lining the colon (causing diarrhea).

Many of us who do get the blood sugar rise do not experience this diarrhea. Our digestive enzymes appear to be able to break down these hydrogenated starches into glucose--though given the time lag, this happens slowly.

What about Glycerine?
Glycerine is another sweet additive that manufacturers add to low carb bars. Here again, you'll find that, because manufacturers claim glycerine does not raise blood sugar, they omit it in the carb section of the label information or, if they do list it, they do not include it in the number of diet-counted "impact" carbs. ( Glycerine is sometimes spelled Glycerin and is another name for glycerol.)

As Lee Rodgers, proprietor of The Low Carb Retreat explains, it is only true that Glycerine does not raise blood sugar when people are not low carbing . Rogers states:

When liver glycogen is full, glycerol is converted to fat.
When liver glycogen is empty, glycerol is converted to glucose.
And sometimes just goes right through without doing anything
In short, if you are in ketosis (having emptied your liver of glycogen, its stored carbs) glycerine turns into blood sugar, and then, of course, raises insulin.

A University Study Shows Atkins Bars Raise Your Insulin Levels Out of Proportion to their Carbs
A recent study at Ohio State University, partially funded by Atkins Nutritionals entitled "Insulin Response To Some Energy Bars Is Out Of Balance" demonstrated that the low carb bars have a significant effect on insulin levels despite label claims. Even more disturbing, the rise in insulin was much higher than the corresponding rise in glucose.

The Atkins Advantage bars caused blood insulin levels to rise to an amount that was only 26% lower than the rise caused by eating the same weight of white bread while blood sugar rose an amount 71% lower than the rise caused by eating the white bread.

This means that the bars caused a rise in insulin that was not met by a corresponding rise in blood sugar. This would tend to make the bars a trigger for cravings, since insulin that doesn't find carbs to mop up tends to cause low blood sugar and low blood sugar causes intense hunger. Even worse, the high insulin secreted in response to the bars is likely to turn any fat the low carber ingests with the bars into body fat. Here's a link to a pdf file containing the published study.

So what does this mean for you?
If you are just starting out low carbing, you would be well advised to treat these products with caution. If you are one of the people who do metabolize sugar alcohols, for whom these grams of "low impact carbs" turn into regular, old, high impact glucose, eating a couple of these treats each day could easily derail your low carb diet by adding another 20 to 40 grams of carbs to your intake.

That's why you might consider low carbing without these foods for the first few weeks of your diet until you have become accustomed to how your body feels when your blood sugar has stopped reacting to carbs. If you crave a sweet treat during these first few weeks, try one of the truly low carb treats and snacks whose recipes have been posted on the web. You can find these recipes using the Google Groups Advanced Search scanning the alt.support.diet.low-carb newsgroup for the term "REC." You'll find hundreds of recipes containing no "hidden carbs" at all. Do this until you've gotten the hang of what low carbing feels like to your body.

Once you've gotten into a steady low carb regime and are losing weight, you can test these commercial "low carb" products to see what effect they have on you. If you keep losing weight you can relax. You are one of the lucky ones who can treat them as "low impact" carbs. If you don't, well, for you there's no free lunch. Continue making your own truly low carb treats--and losing weight.

If you are diabetic, you don't have to guess about how sugar alcohols affect you. You can turn to your trusty blood sugar meter to see what they do to your blood sugar. But if you test, test products containing sugar alcohols 2 and 3 hours after eating. Testing only at one hour after eating may be too early and you may miss the blood sugar spike they cause.

Don't Forget the Extra Calories
Even if you can eat snack products containing sugar alcohols without spiking, it's worth giving some thought to the question of how good an idea it is to fill your diet up with calorie-dense low carb junk food.

Though the best selling diet book authors make it sound as if low carbing somehow magically "melts the fat away" this is not true. Low carbing evens out blood sugar, which eliminates hunger and makes it very easy to eat a lot less. But to achieve long term weight loss you must eat less than you burn each day. As you get closer to your weight goal, this becomes more and more evident. The smaller you are, the less food your body burns, and most people find they cannot get the last 20 pounds off without watching their calories closely and eating only 9 - 10 times their body weight in calories. (i.e. if you weigh 140 lbs you may find you have to eat 1269 to 1400 calories a day to lose, depending on the speed of your metabolism and your activity level.)

With that in mind, you can see why, independent of the blood sugar issue, that snack bar with its 240 calories that you eat every day between meals may have serious repercussions for your diet--besides replacing more nutritious foods like the low carb vegetables that form such an important part of the diet of so many successful low carb dieters.

[IrishAngel40]

mdormoy ..
Excellent Article !!! Thanks for sharing

Mdormoy, what a wonderful article! Interesting also about the 9-10 x your body weight to get the last 20 pounds off for some people!

I wonder if the Admins could put the article with Past Amazing Posts?

Good job on your weight loss!

[yvonne326]

So based on this article can I assume that since Sugar Alcohols reek havoc with my digestive tract, that my body does not "count" the carbs and thus I can use the carb count listed on the bars?

Question: Has anyone been "knocked out of ketosis" due to these bars AND experience intestinal distress?

THanks!

Yvonne, what part of the article says about intestinal distress and carbs not counting? I didn't see that. What I thought was interesting was the raise in blood sugar. It seems like this person is talking about the same study since they're both done at Ohio State University.

The article says 'glycerin' is 'glycerol'.

"When liver glycogen is full, glycerol is converted to fat.
When liver glycogen is empty, glycerol is converted to glucose.
And sometimes just goes right through without doing anything.
In short, if you are in ketosis (having emptied your liver of glycogen, its stored carbs) glycerine turns into blood sugar, and then, of course, raises insulin."

My guess is 'in ketosis' would be what I call 'real', and not just a dark register on the sticks.

I don't use LC bars, but maybe someone will post their experience.

[lkmjbc3]

Sorry guys...

Hate to push back but I ate bars all the time after induction and lost 45 pounds. No stomach upset. No cravings. No stalling.

So did my brother and SIL. No problems.

I still think the study is extremely misleading. I do however detect that it fits and reinforces many folks notions.

Bars are mainly for maintenance and pre-maintenance. They are most certainly better than regular candy bars.

I guess everyone must make up their own mind. Do be careful of studies, though...................

lkmjbc3

[Ana K.S.]

This was a very informative thread!

Originally posted by lkmjbc3
Hate to push back but I ate bars all the time after induction and lost 45 pounds. No stomach upset. No cravings. No stalling.

So did my brother and SIL. No problems.

I still think the study is extremely misleading. I do however detect that it fits and reinforces many folks notions.

Bars are mainly for maintenance and pre-maintenance. They are most certainly better than regular candy bars.

I guess everyone must make up their own mind. Do be careful of studies, though...................

lkmjbc3

It's OK to push back! What part of the stuy do you think is 'extremely' misleading? This isn't an argument, I'm interested in understanding.

I think it's entirely possible for people to eat the bars and candy and still lose. Assuming for a minute that they do count at their full carbs, many people could lose on 60-75 carbs a day. Those bars are what, 20-25 each? As an example, someone could do a very strict induction, use reasonable fats, AND have a Milky Way candy bar each day. They would still lose. They would lose faster w/o the Milky Way, but their body could probably take the 45 carb hit. Just a thought.

What I find interesting is the test results of blood sugar levels. Whether the insulin spikes affect someone is according to their own physiology.

You mention the bars are primarily for premaintenance and maintenance, but they are marketing (specifically stated by the Atkins Center) beginning with Induction. I think that's detrimental to a newbie's success -- but that's a different post, LOL!

[JuliaL]

I am by no means a scientist, but I think the truth lies somewhere in between the two divergent opinions expressed in this thread. I'm basing this solely on my personal experience. I was able to eat bars during induction as long as I didn't go over 1 per day. However, when I moved to OWL I tried the SF candy. I got no stomach upset, but started craving more and more! They also knocked me out of ketosis (I only ate 3 Atkins PB cups). So I believe what I read in an article someone posted a few weeks ago (could be the same one Meli posted in this thread) that some people process sugar alcohols the same as sugar and therefore they effect glucose production the same way sugar does. Could I be one of those? Could that be why they didn't upset my stomach like they do some others?

Now that I'm nearer to my goal weight I find that I cannot eat bars. I also have to watch how many calories I eat every day or I will not lose. I have to credit Kimmer for giving me that insight. Calories DO count.

Julia, I'm interested in the stomach upset effects. Some people post that they experience it, some don't. Is it intolerance?

Edit: What would really be interesting is to have people with the -itol intolerance tested as per the above study, as compared to those who can tolerate the -itols.

[JuliaL]

Well, I can't help but wonder if it has to do with the way some people process sugar alcohols. I've read many posts from people who say when they eat SF candy they get diarrea. Maybe it's the body's way of purging this alien substance, BUT my body didn't react that way, so does that mean my body thought I was eating sugar? (it's old buddy ) I don't know, but it's something to think about.

Originally posted by Kimmer
Blood samples revealed that in comparison to the bread, the high carb bar caused insulin to raise by 75%, while the chicken caused it to drop by 75%.

I wondered about this "drop" in insulin as well. When your blood sugar goes up, more insulin gets released. I have heard that you can trigger insulin releases by drinking caffeine and such. I don't understand how eating something with 0 carbs will DROP your insulin level. I think what the article meant was, if you eat bread alone, it raises your insulin by x. You change x into 100%. When you eat chicken only, insulin level was only 25% (100-75) of that.

Katie, gotcha. But eating chicken alone doesn't raise/lower your blood sugar at all. Maybe the study fed people the bread first, did their measurements, then fed the 'guinea pigs' the LC bars or the chicken?

OK, now we need to get a copy of the study. They said Atkins funded part of it, wonder if they have a copy?

[lkmjbc3]

Kimmer:

See my previous post.

We have two pieces of bread with who knows how many carbs. Let us guess a total of 20 grams. That means the roughly 100 calories. We have a bar with 400 calories. The bar is composed of fat/carbs/ and protein. Let us guess 5 grams of net carbs. The bar also has say.... 30 grams of protein and 20 of fat. If a body isn't deficient in protein then most of the protein gets converted to carbs. Some of the fat will also get converted. Thus we are comparing apples to oranges.

A better test would be the Atkins bar and 8 pieces of bread. The caloric calc would be equal.

Even better would be the bread with equal amounts of like protein and fat.

You see what this test says is that an Atkins bar which is much more food calorically produces even less of an insulin response than two little pieces of bread.

lkmjbc3

[themuffin]

Originally posted by Kimmer
Yvonne, what part of the article says about intestinal distress and carbs not counting? I didn't see that. What I thought was interesting was the raise in blood sugar. It seems like this person is talking about the same study since they're both done at Ohio State University.

Hi Kimmer,

To me you are like a Low Carb Senior Vice President But I understood the part in the article about sugar alcohols and stomach upset exactly the way yvoone did. If I get gas and/or diarreah then that means my body can't digest it like sugar and thus I only need to count the lower "net carbs". But if I experience nothing then it means my body is digesting it just like regular sugar and thus I should count all of the carbs. At least that's how I understood it. Are we wrong?

BTW: In order to lose my last four pounds I ate two bars per day and then a regular dinner. It worked because I lost it. I also didn't experience any stomach upset which I usually do with sugar alcohols. I think I didn't because I only ate one bar at a time with several hours lapsed inbetween.

Tonya, NYC
165/129/130

[vargagurl]

I knew there was a reason to stay away from them.

Keep in mind that these bars not only contain sugar alcohols, but most of them also contain aspartame, which causes an insulin response for a lot of people. I know that, in my own case, I might as well just have a bag of peanut M&Ms -- the blood sugar hit will be about the same and the M&Ms taste a damn sight better than those awful bars.

[SimpleHarmony]

A better test would be the Atkins bar and 8 pieces of bread. The caloric calc would be equal.

Aren't you going down the road of calculating a glycemic index here? I think the GI compares the amount of food that holds 50 grams of carb of each food (the base food is either white bread or glucose, depending on the index). Since 50 carb grams has nothing really to do with normal portion size, some calc Glycemic Load, which compares normal portion sizes. Then Atkins goes a step further and calcs Atkins Glycemic Rating (AGR) which takes into account GL and carb count. I think.

Anyway, I've never had a bar and plan to never do so. I did try some of the S/F chocolate candies, and sometimes they gave me "stomach effects", and sometimes they gave me strong cravings. So I suspect the effects can be different at different times on an individual body.

Maybe the thing w/chicken is saying that if the bread is eaten with the chicken, the blood sugar is that much less than if the bread is eaten without anything?

[argo2d]

well the way i see it is if you dont have gas problems, then you are digesting it

and if you do have gas problems, you could still be digesting SOME of it

so you never know how many CARBS to REALLY consider

but i dont count carbs, i just avoid them because they arent a natural source of nutrition. if i ever needed to go to another country for example where they weren't all hyped up about these products, i wouldn't want to be dependent on anything like that.

and uh they're also pretty calorie dense arent they?

[absmom]

What about the bars that say they only contain 2 net carbs? I'm new, and in induction - but when I feel an intense urge to cheat, I have one of those. I include the two carbs in my total count.