"We'll Have To Sacrifice Georgia"

US News and World Report posted an article yesterday reviewing the options for destroying pathogens in our food:

Can Irradiating Food Zap Salmonella Outbreaks?

Here are the options:

• Irradiation
  
• X-rays
  
• Pressure-treatment
  
• Ozone treatment
  
• Chlorine treatment
  
• Bacteriophages (viruses that kill bacteria)

Which do you prefer? Pressed to answer, I'd pick ozone treatment. But I don't know much about any of these, really.

Conversation between me and BL:

Me: "We're going to have to do something about pathogens in food."
BL: "Why not just clean these buildings? Disinfect them?"
Me: "You'll never get this quantity of mass-produced, pressure-to-keep-prices-low food totally clean."
BL: "Look, clear out the Peanut Corp. plant and set off a nuclear bomb."
Me: "That's crazy."
BL: "We'll have to sacrifice Georgia."
________Photo is an actual image of the mushroom cloud from the atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.

Centralized Meat Production: One Beef Patty Has Remnants Of How Many Cows In It?

You just finished eating a fast-food hamburger. Guess how many cows contributed to that one 4-ounce beef patty?

"Clayton and Belk (1998) determined the number of cattle contributing muscle and/or fat tissue to a single patty, concluding that in a single 4-ounce ground beef patty the fewest number of animals, on average, that contributed tissue to a patty was 55 and the greatest number, on average, was 1,082."
- Traceback, Traceability And Source Verification In The U.S. Beef Industry (pdf), Colorado State University, 2000

This is how one infected cow can sicken thousands of people all over the country ... I would venture.
________

February Morning

The sun's slipping in earlier these days.


________Photo: Bix

Eating In America

"There is a tendency among all of us who work with food regularly to become more than a little precious about it. (Whenever you start discussing which kind of salt you’re using, or which variety of beet you prefer, watch out.) And when we do, we forget that most people in the United States neither know nor care about such things, and that a large percentage of those are not, in general, eating well."

- Mark Bittman, Elitism and School Lunch, New York Times, February 24, 2009.
________

A Diet High In Saturated Fat Raises Risk For Blood Clots

I like this study because it investigated the effect of background diet - in this case, the effect of diets containing different types of fat on blood coagulation, that is, how readily the blood clots:

Chronic Dietary Fat Intake Modifies The Postprandial Response Of Hemostatic Markers To A Single Fatty Test Meal, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, February, 2008

It concluded:

"The use of a dietary model rich in SFA creates a more procoagulant environment than does a model that includes MUFA or [PUFA] as the source of fatty acids."

SFA: Saturated fatty acid, e.g. butter, cheese
MUFA: Monounsaturated fatty acid, e.g. olive oil
PUFA: Polyunsaturated fatty acid, e.g. corn oil, nuts

Design

Six markers for coagulation, in addition to blood lipids, were measured in 20 healthy young men after they consumed one of three diets for a month (it was a crossover design):

1) Saturated-fat-rich diet (SFA diet, primarily butter, about 3.5 tablespoons/day)

• 15% of energy as protein
• 47% of energy as carbohydrate
• 38% of energy as fat (22% SFA, 12% MUFA, 4% PUFA - of which 0.4% was omega-3)

2) Monounsaturated-fat-rich diet (MUFA diet, primarily olive oil, about 5 tablespoons/day)

• 15% of energy as protein
• 47% of energy as carbohydrate
• 38% of energy as fat (10% SFA, 24% MUFA, 4% PUFA - of which 0.4% was omega-3)

3) Omega-3-rich diet (N3 diet, primarily walnuts, about 18 halves/day)

• 15% of energy as protein
• 55% of energy as carbohydrate
• 30% of energy as fat (10% SFA, 12% MUFA, 8% PUFA - of which 2% was omega-3)

Diets were fed to participants (lots of control there) for 28 days, at the end of which a meal rich in the specific fat for each group was administered and blood was tested.

Results

Fasting State (12 hours after eating):

• Total cholesterol was higher after the SFA-rich diet than after the N3 and MUFA diets.
• LDL cholesterol was higher after the SFA-rich diet than after the N3 and MUFA diets.

Postprandial State (4 hours after eating):

• "The MUFA or N3 meals lowered concentrations of factor VII coagulant activity, although the reduction was greater after the MUFA-enriched meal."
• "The concentration of PAI-1 (encourages blood clotting) was greater after the SFA meal than after the other 2 meals."
• A fatty meal, no matter the type of fat, increased coagulation markers postprandially.

Of Note

1. "[Monounsaturated fats (olive oil) and omega-3 fats] are more easily cleared from the plasma than [saturated fats] due to their conformational structure."
   
2. "Our group previously showed that consumption of a MUFA-rich diet (rich in olive oil) improves sensitivity to insulin and reduces insulin and PAI-1* concentrations in comparison with SFA-rich diets."
   
   In fact, this study found higher concentrations of PAI-1 after consumption of the saturated-fat meal than the MUFA or omega-3 meals. And those higher concentrations stayed in the blood longer then they did after the other meals.
   
   * PAI-1 is plasminogen activator inhibitor-1. It inhibits the breakdown of blood clots. It's not the best thing to have in the blood if clotting is a problem.
   
3. "Some of the results we obtained may depend on minor components of the various foods we used rather than on the nature of their fats. Walnuts, for example, are a source of L-arginine, the original precursor of nitric oxide, so that an increase in nitric oxide might help to create a less proinflammatory and procoagulatory environment. For its part, virgin olive oil contains phenols in its nonsaponifiable part, and these have shown vasodilatory and anticoagulant effects during the postprandial phase.
   
   Such that ... "... part of the effects showed after the consumption of this diet were not due to its fatty acid composition but to the minor compounds present in virgin olive oil."

Take-home message for me ... it's best to limit meals high in saturated fat.
________ Photo: Bix

What Is This?

Go to Google maps.

Copy and paste this location into the search box:
31 15'15.53N 24 15'30.53W

Select "Satellite" Image ... upper right corner, and zoom in as close as you can. You should see something that looks like the photo to the right. (Click for larger.)

You are looking at the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Africa.

This article says that the rectangle you see, which is underwater, is about the size of Wales. Any ideas?
________Photo is a screenshot from Google Maps.

Grass-Fed Cattle Have A Bigger Carbon Footprint Than Grain-Fed Cattle

Mark Bittman from the New York Times opened a can of worms with this little blog post this week:

"A report from Science News (via Food Times) argues that beef produces 19 kilograms of CO2 for every kilogram served; that grass-fed beef is worse — yes, worse — for global warming than feed-lot beef; and that for every percentage reduction we make in meat consumption we’ll see a corresponding reduction in its contribution to global warming."
- Mark Bittman, Meat and Global Warming

From that Science News article he linked:

"[Green house gas emissions are] roughly on the order of 50 percent higher in grass-finished systems."

"The reason: "It's related to the much higher volumes of feed throughput and associated methane and nitrous-oxide emissions." He added that most pastures were highly managed, and subject to "periodic renovations and also fertilization." Finally, with grass-fed cattle "there is also a high [grass] trampling rate. So the actual land area that you need to maintain magnifies that difference."
- The Carbon Footprints Of Raising Livestock For Food, Science News, Feb 15

I learn something every day.
________Photo of grass-fed calves from Janzen Family Farms.

100 Billion Farmed Animals - The Earth "Simply Can't"

Grist.com just posted a fine article on the growth of industrialized meat production:

The CAFO Syndrome:
An Interview With Mia Macdonald On China's Growing Appetite For US-Style Meat Production

An excerpt:

"More than 60 billion farmed animals are alive today, a population that's set to rise to more than 100 billion by 2050 if current trends persist (there's a school of thought that thinks they simply can't, but we're talking about the numbers here).

To have all of those animals raised in a free-range pasture system would require massive amounts of land, not to mention water and climate space.

The earth just doesn't have that much land -- and even if it did, there's a question about whether resources like land, water, and climate should be used to produce ever-greater quantities of meat that won't solve world hunger. Eating vegetarian is going to have to become more common everywhere. Those living and making policies in the industrialized world certainly have an opportunity to set an example."

"Eating vegetarian is going to have to become more common everywhere." If that's true, several countries have a leg up on the US right now.
________Illustration: "Feed Lot" by Sue Coe.

Homemade Pizza With Broccoli Rabe (Rapini)

It was either sit at the computer or make pizza.
________This recipe for Thin Crust Pizza was my very first post here almost 5 years ago. Seems like yesterday.
Photo: Bix

Vitamin C Supplementation And Exercise Don't Mix

Do you take vitamin C?
Do you exercise?

Read on for a study that found a deleterious effect of vitamin C supplementation:

Oral Administration Of Vitamin C Decreases Muscle Mitochondrial Biogenesis And Hampers Training-Induced Adaptations In Endurance Performance, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, January 2008

Researchers gave vitamin C to humans and rats.

• The humans were 14 sedentary men, randomized into 2 groups: one group received 1 gram vitamin C daily. All men exercised on a stationary bicycle for 8 weeks.
  
• The rats were 36 Wistar males, randomized into 6 groups: 18 were divided into 3 groups (untrained, trained, trained w/vit C) and trained for 3 weeks. The other 18 were trained for 6 weeks. Rats given vitamin C received a dose about 4 times that used in humans.

Findings

1. Vitamin C reduced endurance.

"Training increased the maximal running time in rats [by 186.7%]. However, this increase was prevented by daily supplementation with vitamin C. In the supplemented animals, the running time increased only 26.5%."

2. Vitamin C reduced the number of mitochondria (energy-producing factories) bodies make in response to exercise/stress.

The graph below shows the change in level of transcription factors needed for mitochondrial production. Look at the vitamin C group - almost equal to levels in untrained rats.



The number of mitochondria is linked to endurance and fatigue. (See No. 1 above.)

"Endurance capacity [time to fatigue] is dependent mainly on the mitochondrial content of skeletal muscle."

3. Vitamin C also reduced the amount of endogenous (made by our body) antioxidants.

(Two antioxidant enzymes, superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase (GP), were found in lower levels in those taking vitamin C. Recall that acrylamide in browned/aged foods is metabolized by GP - a good thing. In fact, GP is widely used in cells to prevent damage from oxidation.)

The graph below shows the change in levels of these two antioxidants. Again, the vitamin C group was almost equal to levels in untrained rats.


Mechanism

Exercise generates oxidized compounds. It was thought that by consuming more antioxidants, e.g. vitamin C, we could protect our cells against these oxidized compounds (known as reactive oxygen species: ROS).

We're finding that ROS aren't altogether bad. The body uses them as signals. Previous posts discussed this, e.g. the case of too much selenium reducing ROS leading to insulin resistance and weight gain.

In this case, ROS signals the body to make more mitochondria, and more in-house antioxidants. It probably does other things, but this study measured just those variables.

Final quote from the study:

"Thus, the common practice of taking vitamin C supplements during training (for both health-related and performance-related physical fitness) should be seriously questioned."

________

February 14, 2009

Click for larger.
Blue-footed boobies: The male has a smaller pupil and slightly lighter feet.
"The males of the species have been known to throw up their head and whistle at a female flying by."
________Photo: I wish I could remember :|

Genetically Engineered Food Crops

Virginia sent this link to a list of genetically engineered food crops:
PCC Natural Markets, Genetically Engineered US Food Crops

For crying out loud, this constitutes my entire diet! I had no idea GE was making such aggressive inroads to fresh fruits and vegetables. (The list is current as of August 6, 2007. Does anyone know if something jumped from the "in development" list to the "marketed" list since then?)

________

Safe Food Act, Has Its Time Come?

virginia asked:
"where is the "redesign" archived, and could it be re-introduced?"

This is the full text of Senate Bill S654, from last Congress (110th):

Safe Food Act of 2007

It has been introduced into Congress in some form since 1999. It has never risen to the level of a vote in either House or Senate that I know of. No food crisis has ever been big enough for it to command attention. That's a shame.

One reason I think it has never gone anywhere is that it consolidates, or brings together under one roof, all the food safety activities of a variety of agencies. (When you have one agency, the FDA, assuring the safety of closed-faced sandwiches and another agency, the USDA, assuring the safety of open-faced sandwiches (No lie), you have lots of redundancy and wasteful spending.) But I guess no agency wants to give up control, and associated funding, of a portion of their reign.

So, you get what happened during the melamine-in-pet-food problem. You collect representatives from FDA/CFSAN, USDA/FSIS, CDC, Vet Medicine, probably HHS, maybe EPA, and others, put them into a room for a press conference, and hope everyone gets along and reaches agreement. What happens? People point fingers and speak at cross purposes. There's no line of command for these groups who work for different bosses, in different settings, in different work cultures. Someone from the USDA has no authority over someone from the FDA, and vice-versa.

The FDA (closed-faced sandwiches) requested recall authority from Congress in 2007. Congress failed to act. The USDA (open-faced sandwiches) said they weren't even interested in having authority to recall, but if they decided they wanted it, they would have to write a parallel document, have it introduced to the House and Senate, discussed, debated, passed, funded - all separate from the FDA's effort. We, the taxpayer, pay for these redundant efforts. We, the public, fall victim to the holes in the system this structures creates.

A few more examples ... USDA regulates chickens; FDA regulates whole eggs; USDA regulates processed eggs. USDA regulates cheese pizza, FDA regulates pepperoni pizza.

You get the picture. We're wasting money and risking the public's health running food safety like this. No one wants to stand up and take responsibility for all of America's food. If there is any area that is crying our for leadership, it's food safety.

(You got me started, virginia.)
________

Genetically Engineered Asparagus

Note the label.

This does not give me confidence that asparagus not labeled "NON GMO" have not been genetically engineered.

I purchased these at the grocery store this week.

Trivia About PLU Numbers

At one time it was thought that genetically engineered produce would be more attractive to the consumer. The prefix "8" before the PLU number was assigned to indicate that the food had been genetically engineered. I've never seen an 8. Ever.

The prefix "9" was assigned to indicate that the food is organic. If these asparagus were organic (and therefore, by definition, not genetically engineered), the PLU would read 94080 instead of 4080. Producers go out of their way to clearly label "9" these days.
________Photo: Bix

We Need One Agency Whose Job It Is To Protect Our Food. We Need It Now.

Having worked in engineering for 8 years, I know that a patch applied to fix a failure is often another failure-in-the-making. You need the patch to continue operating, but you also need the redesign.

Patches create stress concentrations that lead to more cracks later. Patches don't address the weakness of the original design. Redesigns, if done well, are lighter in weight, more efficient, and, yes, more costly up front. But they provide cost savings in the long run, especially when they prevent breaks such as we've seen in food safety in the last few years.

We need to redesign the food safety apparatus in this country. We have to stop depending on patches, as we have for the last 10 years. A beautiful redesign that debuted one Food Safety Administration, consolidating the food safety efforts of over 12 separate agencies, was introduced in 1999. That one agency had recall authority, more enforcement power, more resources for inspections, both at home and abroad. It may very well have prevented the melamine-in-pet-food catastrophe, since it recognizes that inputs used for pets and livestock are essentially inputs to the human food supply. Nothing came of it. People only pay attention to the food supply when there's a crisis.

I think it's a mistake to spend all our current crisis-energy on just a patch. The right thing to do is fix the break, and start redesigning - now. We need one agency in this country whose job it is to protect our food supply. We need it now.
________

The Story Of Stuff

Below are two short, really short, teasers for The Story Of Stuff. (The full-length feature is 20 minutes but worth the sit-down time!)

Replace the word "stuff" with "food" and the story still applies - global food production (which is how most of the world is fed) is also polluting, unsustainable, and increasingly bad for human health.

We Aren't Paying For The Stuff We Buy



The Treadmill

________

Job Losses In The Current Recession

Oh my god.
First retirement savings, now present income.

"If you're headed for a cliff, you've got to change direction."
- Barack Obama, February 5, 2009

________Chart via House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's blog.

Dear Senator, Please Support Labeling Of Genetically Engineered Food

Below is the letter I sent to my Senators and Congressman. You're welcome to cut and paste it into an email to your Senators and Congressman. Just visit each of their sites, click "Contact," and fill out the form. There is power in numbers.
________
Dear Senator ___________,

I'm writing today to ask you to support labeling of genetically engineered food.

For the reasons cited in HR 6636 from the 110th Congress:

The Congress finds as follows:
(1) The process of genetically engineering foods results in the material change of such foods.
(2) The Congress has previously required that all foods bear labels that reveal material facts to consumers.
(3) Federal agencies have failed to uphold Congressional intent by allowing genetically engineered foods to be marketed, sold and otherwise used without labeling that reveals material facts to the public.
(4) Consumers wish to know whether the food they purchase and consume contains or is produced with a genetically engineered material for a variety of reasons, including the potential transfer of allergens into food and other health risks, concerns about potential environmental risks associated with the genetic engineering of crops, and religiously and ethically based dietary restrictions.
(5) Consumers have a right to know whether the food they purchase contains or was produced with genetically engineered material.
(6) Labels voluntarily placed on foods are insufficient to provide consumers with adequate information on whether or not all the food they are purchasing contains or was produced with genetically engineered material.
(7) Mandatory labeling provides a critical scientific method necessary for the continual postmarket surveillance to study long-term health impacts and enforcement of food safety laws preventing adulterated foods from reaching consumers.
(8) Many of the United States’ key trading partners, including countries in the European Union, Japan, and the People’s Republic of China, have established, or are in the process of implementing, mandatory labeling requirements for genetically engineered food.
(9) Adoption and implementation of mandatory labeling requirements for genetically engineered food produced in the United States would facilitate international trade by allowing American farmers and companies to export and appropriately market their products--both genetically engineered and non-genetically engineered--to foreign customers.

And because the 27 member states of the European Union, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, and other developed countries have instituted mandatory labeling of GE food, I think it's the right action to take, at the right time.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring.

Sincerely,
[Your name here]
________

Black Barley

You remember the box I received from FedEx that had the large "Do Not Irradiate!" sticker attached? This was one of the items in that box. I'd never seen anything like it.

It was very good in a soup with black turtle beans, crimini mushrooms, sautéed onions, tamari, and lots of spices. The sauce was a deep chocolate brown. Good, baby, good. I'll order from Gold Mine again.
________Photo: Bix. Click for larger. Fine print is everything.

Diabetes Is An Expensive Disease

I'm resurrecting this post from 2007 because I think it's still relevant, even more so in these trying economic times -- and because that little inflation calculator at the bottom returns back some shocking figures.

The day you're diagnosed with diabetes is the day you'll want to begin making deposits into your own personal diabetes fund. It's also a good day to review your medical coverage. A plan that's comprehensive (includes dental and vision), with low deductibles (those were the days) and no donut hole is a good choice. Make arrangements for that plan to be with you for a long time too, because diabetes isn't something that goes away. (Although, see fiona's comment.)

I've worked in this field for years. I'm humbled when I see the costs patients endure ... the costs to their health, to their sense of wellbeing, to their productivity, to their time, and to their wallet - the cost I've chosen to discuss here. I can't think of an organ system that diabetes doesn't affect. That widely distributed, long-term, insideous chipping-away at someone's vigor is difficult to watch. I can only imagine how difficult it is to experience.

The day you're diagnosed with diabetes is the day you'll begin to look back with fondness at once- or twice-a-year visits to a doctor. The schedule of healthcare visits recommended for a person with diabetes is breathtaking:

• Physician (Minimum every 6 months, more frequently if on insulin: HbA1c, glucose, lipids, urinary protein, blood pressure, BMI, immunizations)
  
• Gynecologist/Women (Yearly: breast exam, mammo, pap test, polycystic ovary, sexual dysfunction)
  
• Urologist/Men (Yearly: PSA, rectal exam, sexual dysfunction)
  
• Specialists: Endocrinologist, Cardiologist, Gastroenterologist, Dermatologist, etc. (As needed: stress test, micro/macrovascular disease, gastroparesis, colorectal exam, acanthosis nigricans)
  
• Dentist (Every 6 months: periodontal disease, thrush, infections)
  
• Eye Doctor (Yearly: retinopathy)
  
• Podiatrist (Yearly: neuropathy, vascular disease, infections, ulcers)
  
• Dietitian (Several visits up front then as needed: macronutrient intake, weight management)
  
• Mental Health Professional (Psychosocial screening (eating disorders, mood disorders, therapy compliance, etc.) should be be conducted by your physician with follow-up by specialist as needed. The rates of dysthymia and depression with diabetes are high and may be linked to the disease.)
  
• Diabetes Educator (Several visits up front then as needed: disease self-management, lifestyle)

Office visits are only part of the expense pie. There are also:

• Pharmaceuticals (oral, injectible)
  
• Medical Supplies (testing meters, lancets, strips, batteries, syringes, insulin pumps)
  
• Specialty Items (glucose tablets, skincare products, software, socks, logbooks)

Most of the above are just basics. They can help people successfully manage blood glucose and other aspects of their disease (foot care¹, skin care, wound care, eye care², sick days, etc.) and stave off diabetic complications. Once a complication sets in, say neuropathy, kidney disease, or heart disease, your schedule for office visits, lab tests, and procedures gets even more crowded. Diabetes provides a non-stop revolving door to the healthcare arena.
________
All those visits and supplies cost.

Two studies I came across recently that attempted to document those costs:

1. Health Care Expenditures For People With Diabetes, 1992, in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism:

"Per capita expenditures for confirmed diabetics ($11,157) were more than four times greater than for non-diabetics ($2,604)."

2. Economic Costs Of Diabetes In The US In 2002, in the journal Diabetes Care:

"Per capita medical expenditures totaled $13,243 for people with diabetes and $2,560 for people without diabetes."

That last figure is useful as a stand-alone amount but a little misleading in a comparison since people in their study who had diabetes tended to be older than people who didn't. Still, after adjusting for age, sex, and race/ethnicity they found people with diabetes were spending about 2.4 times as much as those without the disease.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has an Inflation Calculator:


It can convert that $13,243 (2002 dollars) to 2007 dollars. It's based on the Consumer Price Index though, and healthcare costs have risen faster than the cost of consumer goods (and wages) in the last 5 years.

When it comes to diabetes, the saying "Take a walk or take a pill." could be more aptly worded, "Take a walk or take an expensive pill."
________¹ Diabetes is the leading cause of lower-limb amputations in this country.
² Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in this country.

Diets Higher In Fat and Lower in Carbohydrates Linked To Worse Blood Sugar Control

Fresh study from this month's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN):

Association Of Diet With Glycated Hemoglobin During Intensive Treatment Of Type 1 Diabetes In The Diabetes Control And Complications Trial, AJCN, February, 2008

Five years worth of diet records of people with type 1 diabetes (532 participants of the DCCT¹) were collected and analyzed for their association with HbA1c².

Findings:

"Substitution of fat for carbohydrate was associated with higher HbA1c. "

"Among intensively treated patients with type 1 diabetes, diets higher in fat and saturated fat and lower in carbohydrate are associated with worse glycemic control, independent of exercise and BMI."

And because I like maps (click for larger):
________¹ Diabetes Control and Complications Trial
² HbA1c is the abbreviation for Hemoglobin A1c, or glycosylated hemoglobin, a blood test that reflects average blood glucose over the past 2-3 months, the lifespan of a red blood cell.

Blood Sugar Problems? Go For The Starch: Resistant Starch

More on how carbohydrates help manage blood sugar, diabetes, and obesity.

Diets high in carbohydrates, specifically the high-fiber, slow-digesting, fermentable kind, have been shown in several studies to improve blood glucose and cholesterol levels, decrease insulin resistance (a good thing), and help control weight. (Here's one study.)

One way they're thought to do this is by increasing the number of receptors for insulin, and improving how insulin binds to its receptor. (More good things.)

This study describes an additional mechanism. It involves a specific kind of carbohydrate: resistant starch. (I've written about resistant starch, what it is and what foods contain it, on these posts.) Simply, resistant starch is starch (carbohydrate) that resists digestion in the small intestine and ends up in the colon where bacteria feed on it, producing an array of chemicals including some called short chain fatty acids (SCFAs).

In this study, those SCFAs were found to increase the amounts of two hormones that are produced and released from the cells of our gut: ¹

• Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1)
  
• Peptide YY (PYY)

These hormones reduce appetite (increase satiety) and slow gastric emptying (slower digestion means slower and lower post-meal glucose spikes), among other actions.

Study findings:

1. RS stimulates GLP-1 and PYY secretion in a substantial day-long manner, independent of meal effect or changes in dietary glycemia.
   
2. Fermentation and the liberation of SCFAs in the lower gut are associated with increased proglucagon and PYY gene expression.
   
3. Glucose tolerance, an indicator of increased active forms of GLP-1 and PYY, was improved in RS-fed diabetic mice.

Take note of finding #1. These hormones typically degrade rapidly after we eat. That wasn't the case here. Higher levels were found for up to a day after resistant starch was consumed.

This helps to explain the "second meal effect," which I talked about here:

"The foods we eat hours and up to a day after a meal that produces SCFAs, even if those subsequent meals contain a lot of easily digestible (high GI) carbohydrate, will be digested more slowly, and the glucose that enters the bloodstream afterwards will be cleared faster."

Good sources for resistant starch? Cooled cooked potato, cooled cooked pasta (cooling rearranges starch structure making it more difficult to digest), starchy beans e.g. kidney beans, and unripe bananas - the green ones.
________¹ Dietary Resistant Starch Upregulates Total GLP-1 And PYY In A Sustained Day-Long Manner Through Fermentation In Rodents, American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology and Metabolism, November 2008.