The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [63]
INCREASING FAT CONTENT IN MEALS BLUNTS JUMPS IN GLUCOSE MUCH MORE THAN LEAN PROTEIN.
The more fat, and the earlier in the meal, the less the glycemic response. Eat good fat, preferably as an appetizer before the entrée. I now eat four Brazil nuts and one tablespoon of almond butter first thing upon waking.
FRUCTOSE HAS A LARGE AND VERY EXTENDED GLUCOSE-LOWERING EFFECT, BUT THIS DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD CONSUME IT. LOW BLOOD GLUCOSE DOES NOT ALWAYS = MORE FAT-LOSS.
For one week of my testing of the SEVEN device, I drank 14 ounces of orange juice first thing in the morning as my benchmark instead of white bread or glucose. Once I’d established my typical response to 14 ounces of one brand of OJ, I could isolate one variable (like vinegar or lemon juice) and measure the deviation from my usual morning response.
OJ helped me to maintain much lower average glucose values throughout the day.
Does this mean you should eat more fructose? Not necessarily.
My fat-loss plateaued as soon as I introduced fructose (the 14 ounces of orange juice), even though it created a pleasant flat line around the 100 mg/dL mark.27 In future tests, I would like to see if a much smaller amount of fructose in whole fruit form, probably berries, could be used to blunt glucose response without stalling fat-loss or causing fat gain. I think this would ideally be limited to a 24-hour period like a binge day and consumed 30 minutes prior to the one or two highest-GL meals, similar to how I used a small amount of OJ before croissants on September 26.
It’s easy to get fixated on one measurement, whether the number on a scale or the number on a glucometer. But, as Warren Buffett, the richest investor in the world, is fond of emphasizing: it’s not enough to simply measure things—you have to measure what matters.
If your goal is fat-loss, before-and-after bodyfat percentages determine pass or fail, not glucose measurements alone. Keep your eye on the right ball.
VINEGAR, COUNTER TO EXPECTATIONS, DIDN’T LOWER GLYCEMIC RESPONSE. LEMON JUICE, ALSO COUNTER TO EXPECTATIONS, DID.
There’s a great deal of evidence for vinegar lowering the glycemic index of a meal by more than 25%. It seems as reliable as any food “rule” could be.
Both white vinegar and apple cider vinegar were used in the literature. But acetic acid is acetic acid, so any kind of table vinegar that has at least 5% acetic acid should work28 if you consume at least 20 milliliters (1.5 tablespoons).
In my trials, neither white vinegar nor balsamic vinegar had a lowering effect on blood sugar. I even drank 3 tbsp+ of vinegar before my meals as a last- ditch attempt. Unhappy times in stomach-ville and no discernible benefit.
Why no effect? There are a few possible explanations, but the most likely are: I need a higher dose, or vinegar doesn’t affect fructose metabolism and showcases its effects in a high-starch meal. Recall that, owing to the problems of standardizing true real-life mixed meals, I used changes in responses to OJ as a benchmark.
Lemon, however, showed its merits without fail.
There are anecdotes and websites galore that claim lemon juice lowers glycemic index. Neither my researchers nor I could find any controlled studies showing evidence of a GI-lowering effect for lemon, lime, or citric acid. The closest was citrate, a salt or ester of citric acid in combination with other things like insoluble calcium. In my personal trials, three tablespoons of fresh-squeezed lemon juice just prior to eating (not store-bought with preservatives and artificial additives) appeared to lower blood sugar peaks by approximately 10%.
CINNAMON, EVEN IN SMALL DOSES, HAS A SUBSTANTIAL EFFECT ON GLUCOSE LEVELS.
There is ample evidence that cinnamon can be used to reduce the glycemic index of a meal up to 29%. At four grams