The calories are obviously the same! Why does insulin rise higher after eating ultra-processed foods?

The nutritional conditions such as calories, carbohydrates, fat, and protein in the two meals are almost identical, but the human body's response may be different. The latest research has found that different degrees of food processing will lead to differences in post-meal insulin response, energy expenditure and brain activity.

According to the medical website "Medical The study recruited 57 healthy adults aged 18 to 45. Each subject ate two types of lightly processed and highly processed meals. The two tests were separated by at least 3 days.

The researchers specially balanced the calories, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, water, salt and weight of the two meals as much as possible. Each meal was 300 calories, and the difference in main nutrients was controlled within 1%. In other words, the focus of this study is not simply "eating oilier or sweeter", but the degree of processing of the food itself.

After the subjects finished their meals, the researchers collected blood multiple times within 3 hours to measure insulin response, energy expenditure, and carbohydrate burning. The results showed that highly processed meals triggered a higher insulin response and maintained higher blood sugar for a period of time; the body consumed more energy, but burned carbohydrates as energy differently.

Different levels of processing also affect brain responses

The research team then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe brain activity when the subjects saw images of food. The results showed that responses in brain areas such as the ventral striatum and nucleus accumbens, which are related to learning, motivation and reward, were related to metabolic changes after the subjects ate meals with different degrees of processing.

However, subjects did not say they were willing to pay higher prices for highly or lightly processed foods. The research does not prove that highly processed foods will definitely cause obesity or disease, but shows that when the main nutritional conditions are almost the same, the degree of processing itself may be related to the body's metabolism and brain reactions.

There were 57 subjects in the study, but only 32 completed the metabolic and brain imaging tests, so the sample was still small. The research team pointed out that this result helps to further understand the relationship between the degree of food processing and overeating and long-term health outcomes, but the relevant mechanisms still need to be clarified by more research.