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A new tool to guide consumers on how to mix and match foods to improve their blood glucose profiles

Project description

A consumer’s guide to reducing the glycaemic response to starchy foods

Starchy foods are one of the main components of our diet. They supply up to half of our energy needs and, because starch is exclusively made of glucose, these foods play a major role in our blood glucose levels. High blood glucose is linked to a number of chronic diseases and the rate at which starch in a given food is digested is directly correlated with blood glucose levels (i.e. the glycaemic response). Simply put, quickly digested starchy foods lead to high blood glucose levels. However, this effect can be counteracted by an adequate combination with other foods. The EU-funded GlucoMatchMaker project is developing the first mobile app to help people mix and match starchy foods with other foods and beverages to attenuate glycaemic responses.

Objective

Low pH foods can attenuate the glycemic response to starch-rich foods. It has been demonstrated that lemon juice, due to its low pH (pH≈2.3) inhibited key digestive enzymes thereby interrupting gastric digestion of starch in vitro. This effect can significantly reduce the glycemic response in humans. In particular, adding lemon juice to a starch rich meal reduced the mean blood glucose concentration peak by 30%. Considering the panoply of food options available, it is likely that other combinations have similar effects but no work has been conducted to develop a consolidated knowledge base to exploit this strategy.
GlucoMatchMaker will go beyond the state-of-the art by addressing this knowledge gap. The main goal is to develop and test the real-life effectiveness of the first mobile app to guide individuals on how to mix and match starchy foods with other foods/beverages to attenuate glycemic responses.
The research work will employ multidisciplinary knowledge and methodologies and is divided into 4 parts (1) Selection and characterization of starch-rich foods, low-pH foods/beverages and of how their combination influences starch digestion in vitro (WP1). (2) Determination of the conditions of effectiveness of these combinations (in silico models) (WP2). (3) Development of the first mobile app that will integrate this knowledge to guide the user on how to mix and match starch-rich foods with others to lower their glycemic impact (WP3). (4) Test the effectiveness of the developed strategy in a real-life context (WP4).
This project addresses the United Nations and EU target to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by one third as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The research plan was developed in the framework of “H2020 Work Programme - Health, demographic change and wellbeing”, specifically the aim to “translate new knowledge into innovative applications and accelerate large-scale uptake and deployment”.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Coordinator

TEAGASC - AGRICULTURE AND FOOD DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY
Net EU contribution
€ 184 590,72
Address
Oak Park
R93 Carlow
Ireland

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Region
Ireland Southern South-East
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost
€ 184 590,72
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