Diabetes Care, Vol 10, Issue 6 759-763, Copyright © 1987 by American Diabetes Association
Factors affecting interpretation of postprandial glucose and insulin areas
MC Gannon and FQ Nuttall
Metabolic-Endocrine Section, Veterans Administration Medical Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55417.
Recently there has been an increased interest in determining the
circulating glucose concentration after the ingestion of various individual
foods and mixed meals. The purpose of these determinations is to
systematically rank foods with respect to their quantitative effect on
postmeal glucose concentration. Potentially such data could be useful in
designing a diet for individuals with diabetes. We believe this concept is
good. However, several factors that may affect interpretation of the data
used to develop this ranking need to be considered before the utility of
this approach to dietary management can be assessed: 1) duration of time
over which the data are collected and analyzed; 2) use of absolute versus
incremental areas in the determinations; 3) inclusion or exclusion of
negative areas if incremental areas are used; 4) differences in response to
a given food in males compared with females; 5) severity of diabetes; 6)
confounding effects of oral agents or insulin treatment; 7) reproducibility
of data; 8) differences in collection of blood sample; 9) food composition,
processing, and preparation; 10) the dose-response relationship to
ingestion of a given carbohydrate; 11) the meal being studied, i.e., first,
second, or third meal of the day; and 12) a possible effect of the
composition of the previous meal, if the response is tested to any meal
other than the first meal of the day.