Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

1

http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/diet-tips/top-25-natural-appetite-suppressants?page=15

Green tea is on the list of 25 natural appetite suppressants.

"If you're not a coffee drinker and get sick of water easily, try sipping on a cup of hot green tea. Green tea can help you to stop mindlessly snacking, and nutritionists say that the catechins in green tea help to inhibit the movement of glucose into fat cells, which slows the rise of blood sugar and prevents high insulin and subsequent fat storage. And when your blood sugar is more stable so is your hunger!"

uh...what?

Help me sort these claims:

Catechins prevent glucose from being stored in fat cells. (could be true, I just don't know if this is the actual mechanism of action)
Less glucose being stored as fat leads to lower blood sugar. (???)
Less glucose being stored as fat leads to lower insulin. (???)
Lower insulin leads to less fat storage (this one is the only one that makes sense to me).

I thought caffeine led your body to release stored glucose/glycogen, which is why it curbs hunger. I'm generally confused. Help me out?

flag	asked Apr 18 2012 at 20:05 Caroline 91●3

Sam · Answer 1 · 2012-04-18 20:11:20Z UTC

5

This is what you get when you take medical advice from the Shape magazine intern.

answered Apr 18 2012 at 20:11

Sam
1,371●5●17

Craig Almaguer · Answer 2 · 2012-04-18 21:06:12Z UTC

3

blah, blah, blah, blah Shape Magazine. STOP eating the fucking wheat and watch the "hunger paigns" disappear! Enjoy the green tea while you're at it!

answered Apr 18 2012 at 21:06

Craig Almaguer
745●1●5

amplify · Answer 3 · 2012-04-18 20:44:31Z UTC

Intestinal glucose uptake is mainly performed by its specific transporters, such as SGLT 1, GLUT 2 and 5 expressed in the intestinal epithelial cells. By using human intestinal epithelial Caco-2 cells we observed that intestinal glucose uptake was markedly inhibited by tea extracts. While several substances in green tea seem to be involved in this inhibition, catechins play the major role and epicatechin gallate (ECg) showed the highest inhibitory activity. Since our Caco-2 cells did not express enough amount of SGLT 1, the most abundant intestinal glucose transporter, the effect of ECg on SGLT 1 was evaluated by using brush border membrane vesicles obtained from the rabbit small intestine. ECg inhibited SGLT 1 in a competitive manner, although ECg itself was not transported via the glucose transporters. These results suggest that tea catechins could play a role in controlling the dietary glucose uptake at the intestinal tract and possibly contribute to blood glucose homeostasis.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11237201

I guess Shape magazine neglected the footnotes?

Does this caption about Green Tea in Shape magazine make any sense?

3 Answers