From a Heads Up Health blog about insulin load
Beyond “Counting Carbs”
I came across a study titled “
An insulin index of foods: the insulin demand generated by 1000-kJ portions of common foods” by Holt, Miller and Petocz from the Department of Biochemistry, University of Sydney, Australia (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Nov 1997). The study looked beyond the Glycemic Index (GI) which ranks foods according to the extent to which they raise blood glucose concentrations. The following text really caught my attention:
“some of the protein-rich foods…fish, beef, cheese, and eggs still had larger insulin responses per gram than did many of the foods consisting predominately of carbohydrate.”
A search for the “Food Insulin Index” lead me to a game changing presentation titled “
Managing Insulin to Optimize Nutrition” by Australian Engineer and Type 2 diabetic Marty Kendall (his wife is a Type 1 Diabetic) from the Low Carb Down Under Conference (Nov 2015) and to his website
Optimizing Nutrition.
The “Insulin Load” of any given food is calculated as follows:
Insulin Load = Carbohydrates(g) – Fibre(g) + [.56 x Protein(g)]
So, yes, protein will result in an insulin release, but from what I’ve read, it doesn’t spike blood glucose.
Here’s the link for the blog if you want the entire article
https://www.headsuphealth.com/blog/stories-of-transformation/insulin-load-beyond-counting-carbs/