The cereal killer threatening your liver

"The cereal killer threatening your liver", Daily Mail, September 21,
2007,
Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...page_id=1 798

A breakfast of cereal and white toast could raise the risk of a
potentially deadly liver disease, research suggests.

Scientists have shown that diets rich in rapidly-digested
carbohydrates raise the risk of fatty liver, a condition that can lead
to liver failure and death.

Such foods are classed as having a high glycaemic index, or GI, and
include white bread, white rice and highly-processed breakfast
cereals.

Already known to expand the waistline, research now suggests they may
cause fatty liver - in which large globules of fat collect in the
liver, causing it to swell and raising the risk of it failing.

In experiments carried out at the Children's Hospital in Boston,
scientists looked at how mice fared when fed either a high or low GI
diet.

Examples of low GI foods are beans, vegetables, unprocessed grains and
wholemeal bread.

Special K and All Bran fall into this category. Weetabix and untoasted
muesli have a moderate GI.

After six months on their diets, the mice weighed the same.

But those on the high GI diet had twice the normal amount of fat in
their bodies, blood and livers, the journal Obesity reports.

It is thought that the sharp rise in sugar levels associated with
eating high GI foods drives up the production of the hormone insulin,
which tells the body to make and store fat.

Researcher Dr David Ludwig said that fatty liver is becoming
increasingly common among children and is a "dangerous epidemic".

Earlier today, I responded to a post on this newsgroup about the
"benefits" of cod liver oil. In that response, I pointed out that one
can find "corrlelations" between just about any two things that are
common. If "high GI" items were so dangerous, there would be millions
of dead people all over the place. There is no molecular-evidence for
this claim. Rather, what's more likely is that the "low GI" foods are
much higher in fiber and perhaps antioxidants as well, and this means
that the dietary PUFAs and oxidized cholesterol will cause less of a
problem. There are other possibilities as well, such as too much
"high GI" items and too little high-quality protein - perhaps a
combination factors are at work. I witnessed a great grandfather live
to be over 100 on a diet with very little fiber and plenty of "high
GI" food in his diet. This "study" is not even worthy of being
classified as preliminary, but rather is probably best considered a
kind of simulacra. Perhaps the term "factoid" would be best, if
everyone could agree on a reasonable definition.