I've always thought it was a "curious coincidence" that the first Newcastle experiment in 2011 used largely liquid foods.
I gather the "liquid" aspect wasn't deemed important at the time - it was just a controlled way of ensuring people had a known calorie intake. Optifast meal replacement was offered for free, and Optifast happens to
be liquid, and the Optifast website even suggests making the extra vegetables into soup as an option.
People seem to think that the energy restriction is the all-important aspect, and whether the food is solid or liquid is irrelevant. It seems reasonable.
But since the diet had remarkable success, and was remarkably similar to the diet which bariatric surgery patients are forced to consume for weeks (low calorie and liquid), I've always thought "we don't know what we don't know - just because we can't think of a reason why liquids may be better, doesn't mean they aren't".
And if we are going to try to copy the experiment for ourselves, we might as well do things exactly as they were done, regardless of the theory.
I can't find many articles online which try to tackle the question of liquid-vs-solid. There are a few, often not related to diabetes, and the results seem mixed.
I did find one interesting study here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3511220/
...where two calorie-restricted diets were used, one liquid the other solid. The liquid one was used with a view to helping people with portion control. However, one interesting thing noticed was that it was only in the group on the liquid diet that fasting blood glucose and insulin levels both dropped.
I suppose it's pretty meaningless unless you know the overall nutritional content of both diets.
But in the interest of good science, I'm going to clutch at it as an example of something or other which I haven't properly thought through yet, and ignore any other findings which go against it
I gather the "liquid" aspect wasn't deemed important at the time - it was just a controlled way of ensuring people had a known calorie intake. Optifast meal replacement was offered for free, and Optifast happens to
be liquid, and the Optifast website even suggests making the extra vegetables into soup as an option.
People seem to think that the energy restriction is the all-important aspect, and whether the food is solid or liquid is irrelevant. It seems reasonable.
But since the diet had remarkable success, and was remarkably similar to the diet which bariatric surgery patients are forced to consume for weeks (low calorie and liquid), I've always thought "we don't know what we don't know - just because we can't think of a reason why liquids may be better, doesn't mean they aren't".
And if we are going to try to copy the experiment for ourselves, we might as well do things exactly as they were done, regardless of the theory.
I can't find many articles online which try to tackle the question of liquid-vs-solid. There are a few, often not related to diabetes, and the results seem mixed.
I did find one interesting study here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3511220/
...where two calorie-restricted diets were used, one liquid the other solid. The liquid one was used with a view to helping people with portion control. However, one interesting thing noticed was that it was only in the group on the liquid diet that fasting blood glucose and insulin levels both dropped.
I suppose it's pretty meaningless unless you know the overall nutritional content of both diets.
But in the interest of good science, I'm going to clutch at it as an example of something or other which I haven't properly thought through yet, and ignore any other findings which go against it