Fast-food + coffee = soaring blood sugar

GUELPH, Ontario, April 1 (UPI) -- Eating a fatty fast-food meal can result in blood-sugar levels spiking, and chasing it with caffeinated coffee doubles the trouble, Canadian researchers say.

Marie-Soleil Beaudoin, a doctoral student at the University of Guelph in Ontario, with Professors Lindsay Robinson and Terry Graham, discovered not only that a healthy person's blood-sugar level spikes after eating a high-fat meal, and it doubles if caffeinated coffee is added -- jumping to levels similar to those of people at risk for diabetes.

In the study, healthy men drank about 1 gram of a fat-laden beverage -- a fat cocktail that contains only lipids -- for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight. Six hours later, they were given a sugar drink.

When people eat sugar, the body produces insulin, which takes the sugar out of the blood and distributes it to our muscles, Beaudoin explains.

The study, published in the Journal of Nutrition, found that the fatty meal affected the body's ability to clear the sugar out of the blood -- blood-sugar levels were 32 percent higher than they were when the men had not ingested the fat cocktail.

However, after they received two cups of caffeinated coffee 5 hours after ingesting the fat beverage and later a sugar drink -- blood-sugar levels increased by 65 percent.