Josh Hillis

The carbohydrate-insulin model continues to fail.

We can all stop being afraid of carbs now.

The carbohydrate-insulin model predicts that meals with varying glycemic indices (how fast they digest into sugar) will elicit distinct metabolic and hunger responses, including greater intake at subsequent meals following high-glycemic-index meals. These data provide little support for the carbohydrate-insulin model.

Researchers tested this via randomized trial in healthy adults using intervention meals with low, medium, and high glycemic indices and a constant macronutrient composition (protein, carbs & fat).
After intake of the intervention meals, blood sugar and insulin followed the predicted patterns, but subjective hunger did not.
At the individual level, energy intake changes were unrelated to body fatness or levels of blood sugar, ketones, free fatty acids, leptin, adrenaline, GLP-1, glucagon, and insulin-glucagon ratio.

A weak negative association was observed between energy intake changes and insulin or insulin-glucagon ratio at 300 min, opposite to the model’s prediction.

Testing the carbohydrate-insulin model: Short-term metabolic responses to consumption of meals with varying glycemic index in healthy adults: Cell Metabolism
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(25)00015-4

20 years ago, when I first went to the RKC Certification.

Thanks James Sjostrom for posting this, this photo is a pretty wild time-warp!

Most of what I know about hunger and fullness came from a textook "Satiation, Satiety and the Control of Food Intake: Theory and Practice" by Blundell and Bellisle.⁠
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Behavior/psychology is my jam, not nutrition — but I took a great nutrition class and did all of my papers and talks on satiation (noticing when full and stopping) and satiety (staying full between meals). It paired really well with my class on Brain and Behavior. Between those classes and the above textbook, I feel reasonably confident in my understanding of how to put meals together to maximize fullness.⁠
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The funny thing was, after it was all over, it really just came down to eating a balanced meal.⁠
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The plate guideline that we use is inspired by:⁠
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— Harvard School of Public Health's Healthy Eating Plate⁠
— USDA's MyPlate⁠
— Canada's Food Guide Plate⁠
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So, it basically includes everything that they all have in common. Now, USDA's MyPlate and Canada's Food Guide Plate don't have fat on their plate graphics, but if you dig around on their sites they do have recommendations for fat. ⁠
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So, I recommend balanced meals in service of making all of your other eating skills practice easier.⁠
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And, it's cool that it's pretty close to evidence-based guidelines like Harvard's Healthy Eating Plate, and government guidelines like USDA's MyPlate and Canada's Food Guide.