Milk and insulin -- a definitive answer?

[Protobuilder]

I know this question comes up a lot and people disagree on whether you milk while is good when cutting/bulking, but I'm wondering if anyone knows the insulin response caused by milk. People cite Berardi and say you shouldn't eat fats & carbs at the same time. Well, everyone knows milk has carbs (about 11 g. of lactose in a one-cup serving) and fat (unless you're drinking skim). I did some research and milk has a GI of roughly 40-45 (depending on whether it's skim or whole) and a glycemic load of around 4. So, if someone chugs down some 2% milk, are they going to get a large enough insulin spike that they'll store the milk fats as bodyfat? Or is the insulin response low enough that it won't make much difference?

I like to make shakes of two cups of 2% milk (10 g. fat, 22 g. of sugar total) plus two scoops of protein powder and one tablespoon of olive oil (14 g. mono-unsaturated fat). It's a 600 calorie shake w/ roughly 38 g. protein, 26 g. of sugar, and 28 g. of fat. My question is whether that sugar will cause an insulin spike, thereby encouraging my body to store the fats.

Any definitive answers guys? Any thoughts?

 

[Lifterforlife]

Milk will not give an insulin spike. The sugars are naturally occurring. This is why the gi is so low.

And don't put too much into that food partitioning stuff unless you are dieting. It is a useful tool then.

 

[Protobuilder]

Milk will not give an insulin spike. The sugars are naturally occurring. This is why the gi is so low.

And don't put too much into that food partitioning stuff unless you are dieting. It is a useful tool then.

Thanks for the response. Even naturally occurring sugars can cause an insuling spike though, right? I don't know for sure but people say stay away from refined/enriched carbs when dieting, etc., b/c of the insulin response, right? And those carbs are naturally occuring (pasta, fruits, etc.) . . .

 

[Lifterforlife]

Thanks for the response. Even naturally occurring sugars can cause an insuling spike though, right? I don't know for sure but people say stay away from refined/enriched carbs when dieting, etc., b/c of the insulin response, right? And those carbs are naturally occuring (pasta, fruits, etc.) . . .

Most folks do not drink milk as a meal. Drinking milk with a meal with of course change things.

There is much debate between the milk folks and milk nazi's. Any way it goes, when dieting it is a good and easy thing to eliminate. The reason most folks forgo milk when dieting is it is an easy place to cut calories, along with the naturally ocurring sugars.

Peopl do drop of course refined/enriched carbs when dieting for obvious reasons, I in fact drop them any time.

 

[Lifterforlife]

Insulin control is not the end all of dieting, heck, even protien can influence insulin enough to lower total lipolysis anyway.

 

[Protobuilder]

Just to give some examples of the disagreement out there, I did some research and found lots of people saying "milk doesn't cause an insuline response" but then there's stuff like this, the first sentence from a 2003 medical study:

Milk products deviate from other carbohydrate-containing foods in that they produce high insulin responses, despite their low GI.

So who the hell knows??

Do you think my milk/protein/olive oil shake is a bad meal idea, then? I use it as my mid-AM meal to get me through to lunch.

 

[Lifterforlife]

Hell, even protein can and does elevate insulin to some degree. It can stop lipolysis.

In the end, unless you are contest dieting, micromanaging is probably not essential. It all comes down to calories in/calories out.

 

[Protobuilder]

Heh, yeah, you're probably right. I'm just like everybody else -- want to bulk up but stay lean too. LoL

 

[Cynical Simian]

Like lifterforlife said, it's not something to worry about. Milk products aren't nutritionally vacuous like a lot of other (read: highly processed) foods that generate large insulin responses and you'll be eating it with other things anyway.

Full text of the study from which the quoted sentence about insulin response despite low GI came:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/80/5/1246

 

[siamesedream]

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=546516

http://www.truthinfitness.org/projects/mcDonalds/journal.html



Those 2 links are extremely interesting reads. It really causes one to question the validity of "clean" foods in general. Citing 3,000 webpages of sources that say there is, most certainly, a difference between eating "clean" and not eating "clean" makes no difference, results are all that matters. Thought these 2 things would be an interesting read with all the insulin-response talk of milk here.

I might run such an experiment myself when it's time to cut again.