Sarah Dainty just finished her Masters of Science thesis at the University of Guelph in Canada. It was called the Better Bagel Study, because they developed a bagel that contained 25 grams of resistant starch, using RS2 high amylose resistant corn starch. Participants at risk for developing type 2 diabetes consumed a bagel each day for 8 weeks and found significant reduction in postprandial serum insulin levels in response to a standardized oral glucose challenge and improved insulin sensitivity. The lower levels of insulin mean improved metabolism ! !

Most previous clinical studies have delivered the resistant starch in supplement form, which participants mixed it into their foods. This study baked it into a large bagel – 120 to 125 gram bagel, which according to Canadian regulations, was 3 servings of bread. They substituted the bagel for other flour-based food in their diet, but did not change other lifestyle habits such as exercise or caloric intake.

This is exciting for several reasons:

1. Another major clinical finds improved insulin sensitivity from consuming resistant starch. That’s now 9 human clinical studies showing similar benefits! See this link to see for yourself.
2. They ate real food, not a supplement sprinkled into food. Yeah! Now, if only more food companies would use resistant starch to make convenient health-promoting flour-based foods!
3. The food was carbohydrate-rich and contained white flour. The participants had no trouble eating a bagel each day – compliance was more than 99%. This means you don’t have to completely remove white flour from your diet to get resistant starch’s insulin sensitivity benefits.
4. The results were seen in a standard test commonly performed in doctors offices. That means that the results can be found without having to perform some esoteric, ultra expensive test in some research laboratory at a university somewhere.  Your doctor can see it working for you using routine tests.

25 grams of resistant starch a day is still a lot to eat. In terms of ingredient by itself, that’s about 4 tablespoons of unmodified resistant starch/day. You have to be pretty dedicated to get this quantity each and every day.  Putting it into the foods that we eat really makes a lot of sense.

Instead of eliminating flour-based foods, we would LOVE a better bagel, or a better muffin, or a better pasta instead. Maybe even a better cookie. I dream of improved metabolism in foods that we LOVE to eat!

Are you listening, food companies??

#resistant starch #metabolism #insulin