Tag Archives: starch

Black tea fights diabetes

Leave a reply

Long known for its antioxidants, immune boosting and, most recently, antihypertensive properties, black tea could have another health benefit. Black tea may be used to control diabetes, according to a study in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists.

Next to water, tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world. Researchers from the Tianjin Key Laboratory in China studied the polysaccharide levels of green, oolong and black teas and whether they could be used to treat diabetes. Polysaccharides, a type of carbohydrate that includes starch and cellulose, may benefit people with diabetes because they help retard absorption of glucose.

Black tea

Black tea

The researchers found that of the three teas, the polysaccharides in black tea had the most glucose-inhibiting properties. The black tea polysaccharides also showed the highest scavenging effect on free radicals, which are involved in the onset of diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.


“Many efforts have been made to search for effective glucose inhibitors from natural materials,” says lead researcher Haixia Chen. “There is a potential for exploitation of black tea polysaccharide in managing diabetes.”

Starch and breast cancer

Leave a reply

Increased intake of starch may be linked to a greater risk for breast cancer recurrence, a new study has suggested.

Jennifer A. Emond and her team from the University of California, San Diego, conducted a subset analysis of 2,651 women who participated in the Women’s Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) Dietary Intervention Trial, a plant-based intervention trial that enrolled about 3,088 survivors of breast cancer.

WHEL researchers studied breast cancer recurrence and followed the participants for an average of seven years.

The subset analysis involved an examination of how changes in carbohydrate intake influenced breast cancer recurrence.

She and her colleagues obtained carbohydrate intake information from multiple 24-hour dietary recalls at baseline and at one year. In an annual phone interview, participants reported everything they had eaten during the last 24 hours.

At baseline, carbohydrate intake was 233 grams per day. Results showed that women whose cancer recurred had a mean increase in carbohydrate intake of 2.3 grams per day during the first year, while women whose cancer did not recur reported a mean decrease of 2.7 grams per day during the first year.

Breast cancer

Breast cancer

“The results show that it’s not just overall carbohydrates, but particularly starch,” Emond said.

“Women who increased their starch intake over one year were at a much likelier risk for recurring,” she said.

According to Emond, starches were particularly important, as changes in starch intake accounted for 48 percent of the change in carbohydrate intake.


Mean change in starch intake during the first year was 0.1 grams per day among women whose cancer recurred vs. 0.7 grams per day among women whose cancer did not recur.

When change in starch intake during one year was grouped into quartiles of change, the rate of an additional breast cancer event was 9.7 percent among women who decreased their starch intake the most during one year, compared with an event rate of 14.2 percent among women who increased their starch intake the most during one year.

Emond also said that the change in starch intake was “independent of dietary changes that happened in the intervention arm,”

“It is independent of more global changes in diet quality,” she added.