Eating a meal made with ‘slow-release’ carbohydrates, such as oatmeal or bran cereal, before you exercise may help you burn more fat, suggests a recent study in the Journal of Nutrition.

Researchers assessed the rate of fat burn among eight healthy women after they ate two breakfasts: muesli with milk, peaches, yogurt and apple juice on one day; cornflakes with skimmed milk, white bread with margarine and jam and an energy drink on another day.

Both meals contained similar amounts of calories. The first breakfast (muesli) was a low-glycaemic-index (GI) meal, the second was a high-GI meal.

The glycemic index ranks foods based on how much they raise blood sugar. Lower-GI foodsproduce smaller spikes thanhigher-GI foods.

Generally, foods that contain protein, fat and/or fibre – and are digested more slowly – fall lower on the GI scale than those that consist mostly of carbohydrate (e.g., white bread).

On the days when the women ate the low-GI breakfast, they burned nearly twice as much fat during a 60-minute walk as they did on the days when they ate the high-GI meal.

Here is why: because the muesli (low-GI) breakfast was more slowly digested, it didn’t spike bloodglucose levels as high as the cornflake (high-GI) breakfast did.

In turn, insulin levels didnot spike as high either – which probably explains why the muesli-eating women burned more fat, says Ian MacDonald, director of research at the University of Nottingham Medical School.

Insulin plays a role in signalling the body to store fat. So, lowerlevels of insulin might help you to burn fat.

If you are looking to burn more fat, pick low-GI foods, such as oatmeal, over high-GI foods, such as white toast, before your workout. www.eatingwell.com