Comparison of the effects of Chemical Composition, Processing and Food Form on the Satiety of Barley

Low glycemic index (GI) diets have been promoted for weight maintenance due to their effect on satiety. Barley, a low‐GI cereal has been suggested as a satiety inducing food. Recently a number of barley cultivars have been developed for consumer uses and it has been shown that differences in chemical composition, food processing and food‐form affect glycemic responses, but the effect on satiety is not known. To investigate these factors nine cultivars varying in the nature of starch and β‐glucan were studied in two experiments in separate groups of 10 subjects. Satiety was measured by visual analog scales over two hours, satiety area under curve (AUC) and satiety index (SI) were calculated. Experiment 1: seven cultivars were tested with one undergoing four levels of pearling ranging from Whole Grain (WG) to White Pearled (WP). There were no differences in satiety AUC among cultivars or compared to white bread (WB) (AUC WB = 4774 ± 478 mm vs. AUC highest cultivar = 7518 ± 564 mm, P = 0.45) nor differences in SI (P = 0.77). Similarly pearling did not have an effect on satiety (P = 0.99). Experiment 2: WG and WP of 2 cultivars varying in total fiber were made into wet pasta. Compared to WB, high fiber barley pasta had a higher satiety AUC (P = 0.007) but not the low fiber barley pasta (P = 0.33). In conclusion, Food form may affect satiety; however these results do not support the hypothesis that inducing satiety is part of glycemic‐index mechanism. Grant Funding Source : CHIR