American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 40, 1175-1191, Copyright © 1984 by The American Society for Clinical Nutrition, Inc

ORIGINAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS

The relationship between glycemic response, digestibility, and factors influencing the dietary habits of diabetics

DJ Jenkins, TM Wolever, MJ Thorne, AL Jenkins, GS Wong, RG Josse and A Csima

A significant relationship was found between the rate of release of the sugars; glucose, maltose, and maltotriose from amylitic digestion of 10 foods tested in vitro (expressed as the digestibility index) and the blood glucose response to 50-g carbohydrate portions of the same foods eaten by diabetics (expressed as the glycemic index), (r = 0.815, n = 10, p greater than 0.01). The glycemic index related to both the palatability of the foods (r = 0.731, p less than 0.05) and their frequency of use (r = 0.698, p less than 0.05). However, in this group of motivated diabetics food use was not related directly to palatability, but rather to health belief (r = 0.689, p less than 0.05). The results suggest that carbohydrate foods of potential use to the diabetic may be identified by their in vitro digestion characteristics but to a large extent their acceptance will depend on health belief and possibly ease of preparation.

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