A high-sucrose diet may not play as significant a role in the development of insulin sensitivity in healthy, nondiabetic subjects as previously thought, a study suggests.
These findings suggested that factors other than sucrose—including caloric overload, a sedentary lifestyle, and weight gain—may be more important than carbohydrate type in determining the eventual development of type 2 diabetes.
Investigators in the study, which was supported by an unrestricted research grant from the U.K. Sugar Bureau and Suikerstichting Nederland (the Dutch sugar foundation), randomized nearly identical eucaloric diets containing either 25% or 10% sucrose (as a percentage of total energy intake) in 13 healthy men with a mean body mass index (kg/m
Women were excluded from the study to prevent the effects of the menstrual cycle from affecting the end points of the study, reported R. Neil A. Black of the Regional Centre for Endocrinology and Diabetes, Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast (Northern Ireland), and associates (Diabetes 2006;55:3566–72).
Insulin resistance was assessed using a two-step euglycemic clamp. Glycemic profiles were evaluated by a continuous glucose monitoring system, and vascular compliance was evaluated by pulse wave analysis.
Neither fasting hepatic glucose production nor suppression during low-dose insulin infusion was altered by dietary sucrose content, suggesting no abnormality of hepatic insulin action. There was also no difference in peripheral insulin resistance between the two dietary periods.
The results did indicate a trend toward an increase in insulin sensitivity with the high-sucrose diet, although this finding was not statistically significant and is likely the result of chance, the authors noted.
They also cautioned that the results of this study cannot be extrapolated to type 2 diabetes, and said that “further information regarding the impact of severe restriction of sucrose intake in low-carbohydrate weight-reduction diets is also needed.”