Starchy diet 'may damage liver'
A diet rich in potatoes, white bread and white rice may be contributing to a "silent epidemic" of a dangerous liver condition.
"High-glycaemic" foods - rapidly digested by the body - could be causing "fatty liver", increasing the risk of serious illness.

Boston-based researchers, writing in the journal Obesity, found mice fed starchy foods developed the disease.

Those those fed a similar quantity of other foods did not.

One obesity expert said fatty liver in today's children was "a tragedy of the future".


Fatty liver is exactly as it sounds - a build-up over time of fat deposits around the organ.

At the time, no ill-effects are felt, but it has been linked with a higher risk of potentially fatal liver failure later in life.

The study, carried out at Boston Children's Hospital, looked at the effect of diets with precisely the same calorific content, but very different ingredients when measured using the glycaemic index (GI).

This is a measure of how quickly the energy in the food is absorbed by the body, producing a rise in blood sugar levels - high GI foods lead to sharper rises in blood sugar, and similar rises in insulin levels, as the body releases the chemical in response.

High GI foods include many breakfast cereals and processed foods such as white bread and white rice.

Low GI foods include unprocessed fruit, nuts, pulses and grains, including rye or granary bread, spaghetti, apples and oranges.

Silent and deadly

After six months on the diet, 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 researchers say that because the processed carbohydrates are absorbed so quickly, they trigger the release of more of the chemical insulin, which tells the body to lay down more fat.

Dr David Ludwig, who led the research, said that the results would also apply to humans, and even children, in whom fatty liver is becoming far more common.

Between a quarter and half of all overweight American children are thought to have the condition, he said.

"This is a silent but dangerous epidemic," he said.

"Just as type 2 diabetes exploded into our consciousness in the 1990s, so we think fatty liver will in the coming decade."

Tam Fry, National Obesity Forum board member and chairman of the Child Growth Foundation, said it was clear that eating a diet rich in high-glycaemic food led to increased fat.

He said: "Fatty liver is going to be one of the tragedies of the future unless we do something about it."

oh my goodness, people are this clueless that the gov't has to fund an enormous study to research that? lawdy, all that tax money could be spent on better lunch programs for schools or something. pure silliness.

My thought too, first coco.

I find this hard to believe, because there are a lot of people eating a McDougall style diet, a cooked low fat vegan diet that is high in cooked starches. These folks are healing from all kinds of disease.

I have to wonder if these people in these studies were eating a large amount of fat (say 30% or more).

Also, there is the case that starches cooked at high temperatures (250 or higher) become the carcinogen acrylamide. Someone eating a lot of potato chips or french fries or baked goods will be getting a lot of this toxin.

oh no, i'm not "first" coco. just 'other' coco! it can be both our nicknames

Well a couple of things come to mind. Yes, it's sad that people still need research to understand this, but hardly surprising given the world-wide plague of obesity and diabetes we are experiencing.

And I completely agree with Bryan's statement, children in this day and age would be consuming 'unhealthy' starches loaded in fat.

Ultimately, studies are subjective, and often have interested or biased parties funding them. It's a shame there's little incentive to spend money on raw food/organic eating studies that would be considered 'valid/legitimate' in the eyes of the scientific community!

It's kind of messed up that mice had to die to point out the bleeding obvious!

To make matters worse, they always release conflicting information every other day on the news. Next week they'll be telling us that cooked grains are actually good for us. How on earth is the average person supposed to make sense of all this random information they are given, especially if they know they can't trust it? One week, alcohol is bad, the next week, alcohol will make us live longer and so on.

Rawnoggin,
Great point, there are alot of competing ideas out there. It seems like everyone has some 'diet' book out. Either to loose weight, or achieve some ideal. Not to mention 'this fruit has the highest orac value'. Producers also confuse consumer with the terms natural or all natural. Some are so labeled, and contain corn syrup-one of the most processed substances ever! Some contain "NO trans fats" but clearly contain hydrogentated oils, they just reduced the serving size on the packaging to unrealistic portions, to meet the legally defined limit.

I just wanted to tell you all. A few months back I bought some dried fruit at a major grocery chain. I pretty much thought it was just fruit. But I looke at the ingredients listing, and the fruit was coated with some sweetner. Producers are getting so incredibly sly! Due to the bad media coverage of corn syrup, this particular producer has started making some other processed sweetner made from wheat. I don't recall the exact wording, but I believe it was to the effect that it was processed to produce "high fructose wheat syrup", something like that. I am certain that used the same exact process, but starting with wheat, not corn. I am sure its pretty much the same thing.

Bryan,
It looks to me as if the high GL diet was comprised of mostly denatured and processed foods, whereas the low GL diet consists of foods closer to their natural states. That in itself could easily account for fatty liver. Consider the difference between eating an ear of corn vs a corn chip. What passes for science in our society might consider both foodstuffs to be identical since their measurable components are the same, but we know immediately from their effect that they are very different.

I would be surprised if one group ate more fat than another, since that would severly skew the study, even by what passes for science these days.