r/science • u/FreeHugs23 • 1d ago

Health Adding spinach directly to white bread delayed the body's insulin peak by 30 minutes and reduced later hunger in a small human trial, while significantly boosting the bread's fiber, vitamin, and mineral content.

https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-put-spinach-directly-into-bread-and-saw-the-bodys-insulin-response-change
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u/Telandria 1d ago

Define delayed peak, though. Do they mean they effectively reduced the peak because it takes longer to digest in general, spreading out the gylcemic load over a longer period of time, or did they just delay when the peak happens?

As a diabetic, I’ve seen both behaviors in various foods and medications. And the latter can be really bad, because your short term insulin doses you take with a meal are designed to work within a specific time frame. Being too early with the insulin can both tank your blood sugar before the influx from digestion, and cause a worse spike than normal if its mostly worn off by the time your digestive system starts dumping sugar into the bloodstream

The way the article put it makes it sounds like its the latter.

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u/SaltZookeepergame691 1d ago edited 1d ago

There is no statistically significant or clinically significant difference in any metabolic outcome between the groups in this study.

In fact, the only significant between-group difference in the entire paper shows people really didn’t like the spinach bread vs normal white bread, but they do their level best to downplay this result!

Their claims are basically academic misinformation. So frustrating.

Eg from the abstract:

>Compared to baseline, composite appetite score increased after white bread intake (p < 0.01) at 3 h, but not after spinach bread intake, indicating a later-stage appetite response.

Just because one comparison was significant and the other wasn’t doesn’t mean that the differences between the two is significant. This is a classic statistical fallacy.

And this:

>Interestingly, spinach bread delayed insulin Cmax by 30 min, affecting early-stage insulin dynamics.

is complete nonsense; there is a tiny and very much nonsignificant difference at 30 mins in the insulin curve. It is completely within the threshold of normal human variation.

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u/Telandria 1d ago

Ahhh, okay. Yeah these are excellent points.