As well as tasting great, almonds look like they may be useful for people at risk of developing diabetes, heart attacks, or just have problems with their blood sugar levels.

A research team from the University Of Toronto, Canada, looked at the effects of including almonds with a carbohydrate based meal.

The meals were: two control test meals with white bread, test meal with white bread plus 60 grams of almonds, test meal with parboiled rice, and test meal with instant mashed potatoes. All meals were balanced for carbohydrate, fat, and protein, using butter and cheese. (Source: http://www.nutraingredients.com/news/ng.asp?n=72487&m=1NIED04&c=qgtqmovbyiaxdub)

I’m not sure what they mean by the meals being ‘balanced’ for carbohydrate, protein, and fats. They don’t include the percentages of each component, and there are different dietary ideas about how meals should be composed. For example, in the Zone diet, meals are divided up into 40% carbohydrate, and 30% each protein and fat. That is the Zone definition of balance, though it is entirely possible that meals were created to reflect either common eating practices of people, or some other nutritional idea.

If they did use the Zone diet, it may be that the quantity of the macro components (fats, carbs, and protein), is what helped balance out blood sugar levels, as this is one of the selling points of that diet. Either way, the research does look promising, at least warranting further study.

The authors of the study reported that :

“We found that eating almonds can have a significant impact in blunting the glycemic and insulin responses of the body when fed with a carbohydrate meal.”

Specifically, they looked at the levels of thiol  in the blood. Thiol is used to indicate the level of protein oxidation (which is a bad thing). High blood thiol levels mean less protein oxidation (and hence damage), and lower means more oxidative damage.

The reasearch team found that those eating the almond meal had an increase in their thiol blood levels (15 mmol/L), whilst those eating the test meals without the almonds actually had a decrease in their thiol levels.

Another, possible related, benefit for those eating almonds with their meals, was that the glycemic index of those meals was lowered. The glycemic index of a food (and meal), measures how fast the digested food enters the bloodstream. It relates to blood sugar spikes, metabolic syndrome, and a host of other things, including diabetes. Bascially, foods with low glycemic indexes are better. The researchers believe it may be the glycemic benefit, as well as almond’s antioxidants, that are responsible for the improvements in thiol levels.

Unfortunately, the article I read on the report seems to compare ‘apples with oranges’ when it came to reporting the glycemic index of the different meals, so I can’t comment on this.

Lead researcher David Jenkins reported that glycemic indices for the rice and almond meals were significantly less than for the potato meal (38 and 55 versus 94, respectively).

Rice, all types, has a lower glycemic index compared to potato anyway, whether or not almonds are added to the mix. And white bread generally has a high glycemic index, and this result is not mentioned. One thing to remember when looking at the glycemic index of foods is that different brands, recipes, and types of, say, rice or potato, will have a different glycemic index. The base glycemic index needs to be established at the start of the study, and compared only to like ie, bread results to bread results, rice to rice, and potato to potato.

it’s also generally understood that as soon as you start adding fats and protein to a meal, the glycemix index for that meal chages, generally being reduced. However, the thiol levels do indicate that this may be promising research that needs to be followed up.