By Dayne Hudson
A lot of the IIFYM haters are quick to point out (incorrectly) that hormones like leptin and ghrelin that play a vital a role in fat loss/gain, are worse off following a meal involving white burger buns and other high GI carbs.
They also claim that satiety (the feeling of being full) is hindered and serious hunger can come from not consuming "clean" foods and wholemeal and low-GI carbohydates.
It's usually a last ditch effort to claim victory once they realise that insulin levels can elevated for most of the day and fat loss can still occur (as outlined above with the graph).
WHAT THE SCIENCE SAYS - HORMONES
Research has already put this to the test, examining an "unhealthy" meal (in this case a Big Mac) against an organic beef and organic beef roll (8).
The study these three different lunches to 6 overweight men at noon after feeding them the same breakfasts at 8:00am.
The study subjects either received:
- A Big Mac with french fries and a high fructose corn syrup sweetened root beer
- An organic beef rangefed hamburger with unbleached all purpose naturally white flour with a root beer made with cane sugar together with organic potato french fries
- Or a roasted free-range turkey breast sandwich on 60% whole wheat bread with some organic orange juice, alongside a granola made with whole natural almonds, organic multigrain oatbrain flakes, wholesome sweeteners evaporated cane juice, pressed canola oil, clover honey, organic raisins and dried apples.
The stats on the meals are as follows:
BIG MAC: CALORIES: 1044 PROTEIN: 28.2 CARBOHYDRATES: 151 FAT: 53
ORGANIC BEEF: CALORIES: 1154 PROTEIN: 28 CARBOHYDRATES: 163 FAT: 60.2
ORGANIC TURKEY: CALORIES: 1260 PROTEIN: 34 CARBOHYDRATES: 170 FAT: 49
Blood glucose, insulin, leptin (which regulates the amount of fat stored in your body), ghrelin (when your stomach is empty ghrelin is secreted) and free fatty acids were all examined.
AND WHAT DID THEY FIND?
Insulin response and blood glucose was the SAME. There were no significant differences observed.
Fatty acids: they dropped quickly but returned to baseline by 5 hours in the Big Mac and organic beef meals and 6 hours in the turkey meal.
But the interesting part is that the changes in hormones leptin and ghrelin weren't significant between groups.
I've written in detail about the hormone leptin before and how it plays a vital role in fat storage - definetly take a look at it so that this makes more sense.
But the take home message is that a meal at McDonalds every now and then is not make or break; if the macronutrient ratios between meals are all evenly matched, then whether it's "CLEAN" or "DIRTY" will make no difference.
Now it was a small amount of people analysed and it only looked at a lunch and didn't follow subjects over a long period.
