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Less snacking, more satisfaction: Some foods boost levels of an Ozempic-like hormone

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Less snacking, more satisfaction: Some foods boost levels of an Ozempic-like hormone

A fiber found in barley, called beta-glucan, may improve insulin sensitivity, lower blood pressure and increase satiation between meals, research shows.

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A fiber found in barley, called beta-glucan, may improve insulin sensitivity, lower blood pressure and increase satiation between meals, research shows.

LauriPatterson/Getty Images

For several months now, I’ve been studying how the new medications, Ozempic and Wegovy, cause dramatic weight loss.

Both medications contain a compound, semaglutide, that squelches hunger like a fly swatter smashes a mosquito. People who take the medication say they no longer have constant cravings for food, so they eat less frequently. The drug seems to quiet what some people call “food noise,” the constant internal chatter telling them to eat.

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While reading study after study about Wevgovy and Ozempic, I learned that the drug mimics a hormone that our bodies naturally make when we’re eating food. It’s called GLP-1. This made me wonder: Could we increase levels of this hormone by changing our diet?

Turns out, the answer is yes – you can increase your body’s production of GLP-1 with your diet, says Frank Duca, who studies metabolic diseases at the University of Arizona. One of the key foods that triggers its release is a food most Americans struggle to eat enough of, even though it comes with a cornucopia of health benefits. Yup, I’m talking about fiber.

Whenever my family finds out that I’m studying obesity or diabetes, they say, ‘Oh, what’s the wonder drug? What do I need to take? What do I need to do?’” Duca explains. “And I say, ‘Eat more fiber.’ “

But here’s the hitch. Not all fiber works the same way. Duca and other researchers are beginning to show that particular types of fibers are more potent at triggering GLP-1 release and at regulating hunger than others. “We’re seeing now that companies are adding fiber to foods, but a lot of the time, they don’t add the kind of fiber that’s super beneficial for you,” Duca says.

How GLP-1 helps flip hunger into satisfaction

To understand why fiber is so important for producing GLP-1, let’s look at what happens when you don’t eat much fiber. Let’s say you wake up in the morning feeling hungry and you eat two slices of white bread and a fried egg. As the digested food moves into the small intestine, many of the nutrients, such as the carbohydrates, fats and amino acids, trigger an avalanche of activity in your blood and brain.

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“The food activates cells in your intestine, which then release a ton of hormones,” says Sinju Sundaresan, who’s a gut physiologist at Midwestern University. About 20 of these hormones, including GLP-1, are known as satiation hormones.

“They tell your body to start absorption, and to suppress your hunger signals,” Sundaresan says. So you slow down eating and eventually stop because you feel satisfied.

At this point, GLP-1 kicks into action. It stimulates the release of insulin and slows down how quickly the bread and egg moves from your stomach into the intestine. So you don’t use up the fuel all at once, says Gary Schwartz, who studies the neuroscience of eating and appetite at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

GLP-1 also likely activates neural circuitry inside the brain by turning on nerves inside the lining of your gut. “These neurons collect information from the gut, and then signal all the way to the brain stem, where you find another signaling pathway for GLP-1,” Schwartz explains.

But GLP-1’s actions are extremely fast. “Once the hormone hits the blood, it begins to be degraded,” says integrated physiologist Darleen Sandoval, at the University of Colorado, who has studied GLP-1 for more than a decade. “By the time GLP-1 gets to the heart and the rest of the circulation, there’s very little of it left,” she says.

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And so an hour or two after eating this no-fiber breakfast, GLP-1 levels in your blood plummet. And when lunch rolls around, you’re hungry again.

This is where GLP-1 differs substantially from semaglutide, the active ingredient in weight-loss drugs. GLP-1 sticks around in the blood for only a few minutes, but semaglutide persists for days. And this stability allows the drug to go into the brain, where it squelches appetite and cravings directly, says Sandoval. That’s why people on these drugs lose so much weight. “In mice or rats, we can give naturally occurring GLP-1 directly into the animals’ brains, and it stops them from eating,” Sandoval says.

But, back to our breakfast scenarios: What if, instead of eating white bread, you had two slices of high-fiber rye bread, with about 8 to 10 grams of fiber in them? Turns out, adding that hefty portion of fiber adds another opportunity for your intestine to release GLP-1, many hours after the meal.

Satiation hormones last longer after eating fiber

Our bodies don’t have the capacity to break down fiber. So it moves through our small intestines largely unchanged, and eventually – approximately 4 to 10 hours after a meal – reaches our colons.

Here, inside the large intestine, the fiber meets a whole crew of microbes that can digest the fiber. Bacteria in your large intestine can break down certain dietary fibers into smaller molecules. And these smaller molecules can trigger the release of not only GLP-1, but also another key hormone that decreases your appetite, called PYY (peptide YY). These smaller molecules also can suppress appetite on their own, and have been linked to lower body weight and better glucose regulation.

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Since this extra boost of GLP-1 and PYY occurs hours after you eat, it can tamp down cravings between meals and even the overall desire to eat the next meal. “PPY regulates satiety – that is how long you wait between meals,” says the University of Arizona’s Frank Duca. “The release of PYY, in addition to the GLP-1, can increase the length of time between meals,” he says.

These hormones may even influence how much you eat at the next meal. “This is what’s called a second meal effect,” says Edward Deehan, a nutritional microbiologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “If you eat a lot of fiber at one meal, by the time it’s in your colon, it’s around the time of your next meal. So you may have improved insulin responses and improved satiety or a feeling of fullness,” Deehan says.

But, not all fiber is equal: To get this extra boost of satiation hormones, you need to eat fiber that bacteria can digest. These fibers are called fermentable because bacteria literally ferment them, in a similar way that yeast ferments barley into beer.

Scientists, such as Duca, have just started trying to figure out which fermentable fibers may be best at suppressing appetite and inducing weight-loss. “So the agricultural community in the U.S. could prioritize the growing of grains with these fibers,” he explains.

In one preliminary study with mice, Duca and his colleagues found that a fiber in barley, called beta-glucan, induced the most weight loss in obese animals. “At face value and, at least in our settings, it was only beta-glucan that was effective,he says.

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How To Add Barley To Your Diet

Cooking barley is super easy. Some recipes call for soaking the grain before boiling. But it’s not necessary. Simply add one cup of barley and three cups of water to a pot.

For pearled barley, continue boiling for about 30 minutes. For hulled barley, boil for about 40 minutes. Strain the water and you’re ready!

You can throw barley into soups or on salads and boiled barley is a great fiber-rich substitute for white rice. You can also buy barley flour and use it for baking breads, muffins and pancakes.

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Beta-glucan is also found in oats and rye. And indeed, studies with people have found that beta-glucan fiber may improve insulin sensitivity, lower blood pressure and increase satiation between meals.

Other fermentable fibers include dextrin in wheat, oligosaccharides in beans, peas and lentils, and pectin in apples, pears and green bananas.

If your diet currently doesn’t include much fiber, Duca says, don’t worry too much about which fiber you start adding. “Just being aware of how much fiber you’re eating and increasing it, that’s a huge step to improving your health,” he says. “Then once you get into the habit of eating more fiber, you can be more specific about adding more beta glucan and barley.”

But beware of processed foods that claim to have fiber added to them, Duca says. “Companies are hearing that they need to increase the fiber in their foods, but then a lot of times, they’re adding fiber that isn’t super beneficial for you,” he says. “It’s the type of fiber that just passes right through you, without triggering the release of any hormones.”

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This story was edited by Jane Greenhalgh

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Greg Casar Pitches a ‘Resistance 2.0’ for Democrats in the Age of Trump

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Greg Casar Pitches a ‘Resistance 2.0’ for Democrats in the Age of Trump

When he was a 29-year-old on the Austin City Council, Greg Casar led a charge to repeal a ban on camping in the city so that homeless people would not rack up criminal records that could make it harder to find permanent housing.

Tent cities sprang up, conservatives protested and residents voted to reinstate the ban.

These days, Mr. Casar, 35, is the chairman of the House Progressive Caucus and a rising star in a Democratic Party struggling to find its footing during the second coming of President Trump. He has shifted his emphasis to respond.

“We can’t be known as the party of just the most vulnerable people,” Mr. Casar, the bilingual son of Mexican immigrants, said in a recent interview in an Uber en route to a town hall in Thornton, Colo. “This isn’t just about lifting up the poorest people, and that’s where the progressive movement has been.”

Mr. Casar’s goal now is winning back the working people who feel as though the Democratic Party is not for them anymore. He said that also means making economic matters, rather than cultural or identity issues, the party’s bread and butter.

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“I’m shifting and changing,” he said. “On immigration, for example, in 2017, I would say, ‘Immigrant rights are human rights.’ I still believe that, but I’m now saying, ‘We need to make sure that all workers have equal rights.’ ”

He and his team refer to it as Resistance 2.0, and Mr. Casar took it out for a test drive last week. On a school stage here in this city north of Denver, more than 900 miles away from his district, he stood beside a cardboard cutout of a Republican lawmaker whose feet had been replaced with chicken claws.

The rest of the cutout’s body depicted Representative Gabe Evans of Colorado, a hard-right lawmaker elected in November who has held just one town hall since being sworn in. So here was Mr. Casar instead, hoping to show Democrats that their leaders were working to fill the void and defeat politicians too scared to show their faces in their districts amid a public backlash against Mr. Trump’s policies.

It was Mr. Casar’s third town hall in a Republican district, and he pushed back on the idea espoused by veteran party strategists like James Carville that Democrats should simply keep a low profile and “play dead,” letting Mr. Trump’s unpopular agenda win elections for them. If Democrats don’t make vast changes, he said, they will pave the way for a President JD Vance.

“A corpse is not an inspiring political leader,” Mr. Casar said at the town hall. “We need to be out there picking a villain and saying, ‘Elon Musk is stealing your Social Security money for himself.’”

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Many attendees did not sound convinced that the Democratic Party was doing much inspiring at all. One after another, they lined up for questions and expressed general fear and pointed concern that the Democrats were not standing up to Mr. Trump in any real way. They demanded to know what, exactly, the plan was.

“I’d like some confidence that my Democratic votes are actually going to result in strengthening a system and protecting it,” Deb Bennett-Woods, a retired professor, told Mr. Casar.

“It’s frustrating when we feel like our Democrats — I’m sure they’re doing the work, but we don’t hear it,” another woman vented at the microphone.

As a young leader in his second term in Congress, Mr. Casar may be uniquely positioned to answer such angst. He is sprightly — in high school, he placed sixth at the Texas state championships in the mile and once ran a 4-minute, 17-second pace. Despite the anxiety of the current political moment, Mr. Casar presents as a sunny, happy warrior. And his roots are in the progressive populism of Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, whom he endorsed early in the 2016 presidential campaign and introduced at Mr. Sanders’s first Texas rally of that campaign.

“Isn’t our party supposed to be working for the many against the few that are screwing them over?” Mr. Casar said in the interview.

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Ahead of the town hall on Thursday, Mr. Casar popped up at a Hyatt in downtown Denver to meet with workers fighting their employer for an extra dollar an hour in pay that they said they were promised in their last contract negotiation.

“You deserve a raise,” Mr. Casar told them, first in English and then in Spanish. “I’m here with you in this. I’m not here asking for your vote. Your vote is your business, but what I want is to make sure that we all push for other politicians to be out here with you. Workers in this country deserve a big raise.”

He then accompanied them to hand-deliver a letter outlining the pay raise request to the head of human resources at the hotel, who looked uncomfortable and begged the group not to film her.

Standing with the workers, he said, was the most fun he’d had all day.

“It feels a lot more productive,” Mr. Casar said. “I prefer to do this than just voting ‘no.’ So often in Washington, we just get trapped in these senseless meetings.” (He likes to kick off his own caucus meetings by playing Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin, hoping to distinguish them from the tedium.)

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Those workers, he noted in the car, may not have voted in past elections. Maybe this kind of outreach from a Democrat could change that in the next one.

Mr. Evans’ spokeswoman responded to Mr. Casar’s presence in Colorado’s Eighth District by calling him a “defund the police activist who wants to see socialism and transgenderism take over America.”

Mr. Casar rolled his eyes at that. But he said he had made a purposeful pivot to responding to the political crisis in which he finds himself and his party. It means fewer purity tests, and a bigger tent.

And it means allying himself with more moderate Democrats who represent competitive districts and emphasize their military backgrounds to get elected — the types who would never fight for urban camping rights for the homeless.

He is on a text chain with Representatives Pat Ryan of New York and Chris Deluzio in Pennsylvania, two Democrats representing swing districts who also want the party to focus on working people and make villains out of the billionaires benefiting from Mr. Trump’s policies.

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“We’re just talking about issues that are central: utility bills, health care bills, housing affordability,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview. “We can rebuild a broad American and patriotic coalition.”

Mr. Ryan does not love the “Resistance 2.0” framing, but he and Mr. Casar share a vision for what the party needs to be about.

“If we’re resisting something, we’re resisting harm to our constituents, from a big corporation or a billionaire or a corrupt government official,” he said.

Mr. Casar concedes that he has made some mistakes since taking over the Progressive Caucus, a group of nearly 100 lawmakers that is one of the largest in the House. It was his idea for Democrats to hold up signs that read “Musk Steals” and “Save Medicaid” during Mr. Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress. The signs were widely panned, and Mr. Casar now admits they were a bit dopey.

“Looking back on it, I think that just showing up and then leaving would have been better,” he said. “We get pressured into acting like we never make a mistake. I learned that some of the things we pushed for in 2017 became too-easy targets, so we’ve got to change. And I learned from that speech that when the president is just going to lie through the speech, it’s probably best just to walk out.”

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But he has been consistent since Election Day that economic populism is the right approach for his party.

After the election, when Democrats were bemoaning that incumbents worldwide lost because of inflation, Mr. Casar advised his colleagues to take a look at President Claudia Sheinbaum’s decisive victory in Mexico, where a representative of the incumbent party won on a populist economic agenda.

Since then, he has participated in a “Fighting Oligarchy” rally with Mr. Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York. He sees himself as a team coach, and he refers to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez as “the No. 1 draft pick we’ve seen in my lifetime.”

Jetting around constantly can take a toll, especially on a young person attempting to have a normal life. He got dinged last year for skipping President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s address to House Democrats and going to a Joni Mitchell concert instead. It has also been tough at times on his partner.

“It’s really hard,” his wife, Asha, a philanthropic adviser, said of the realities of being married to an ambitious politician. “Greg is my favorite, but it’s not my favorite.”

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He knows this, but Mr. Casar uses the word “resolute” to describe his commitment to the job and the fight ahead.

“There is a level of anxiety across the country that did not exist under Trump 1,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview, referring to Mr. Trump’s first term. “Greg understands that the future of American politics is to do what the Democratic leadership does not understand. That is to start addressing the serious crises of working families.”

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Spain and Portugal hit by huge power outage

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Spain and Portugal hit by huge power outage

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Spain and Portugal were hit by a huge power cut on Monday that paralysed transport networks and disrupted mobile communications, with authorities warning that obstacles remained before electricity could be fully restored.

Hours after it began, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said experts were looking for the cause of the outage, which immobilised the rail system, delayed flights and made traffic lights go dark.

Data from the Spanish electricity operator showed that consumption dropped by more than 10GW when the blackout hit shortly after 12.30pm local time, suggesting that it was one of the biggest in recent European history.

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Weather data showed that temperatures in southern Spain increased sharply between midday and 1pm local time. Higher temperatures can limit how much electricity cables can carry.

Eduardo Prieto, director of services at Spain’s operator, Red Eléctrica, said that a “very strong oscillation” in the network during that time had cut off Spain’s electricity grid from the rest of continental Europe, which had led to the collapse of the system.

Red Eléctrica said that by late afternoon power had been restored across northern and southern Spain — parts of the country that can be more easily supplied by France and Morocco respectively. But it cautioned that fully restoring supply to the whole country would take between six and 10 hours.

“We are going to go through some critical hours before we totally recover electricity,” Sánchez said after a crisis meeting with top government officials.

In an address to the nation he called on people to minimise travel, pay attention to official statements rather than social media, and restrict their use of mobile phones. He also noted the outage’s “tremendous impact” on everyday life as well as economic loss and “anxiety in millions of homes”.

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Sánchez, who said he was in contact with King Felipe, political leaders and the EU and Nato about the crisis, added that the technical experts were working to provide a solution as soon as possible.

By mid-afternoon, all of the country’s nuclear power stations remained offline, according to Montel, the energy data specialist, as they sought to respond to the disruption.

Metro stations in Madrid were closed during the power outage © Susana Vera/Reuters

Spain’s chief traffic authority called on people not to drive their cars, because traffic lights were out of operation due to the cut. The government added that medium- or long-distance rail transport would not resume during the day.

In Madrid, people spilled out on to the streets, as metro stations were evacuated and shops, restaurants and offices closed. Mobile phone coverage was also initially hit. Local media said some — but not all — hospitals were functioning as normal with the aid of backup generators.

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the conservative leader of the Madrid regional government, called on Spain’s Socialist-led national administration to activate emergency plans “to allow the army to keep order, if necessary”.

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Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the head of Spain’s opposition People’s party, criticised Sánchez’s government for being slow to provide updates on the blackout. “We need timely information,” he said.

Nearly 400 flights were delayed at Madrid airport as of mid-afternoon, including more than half of scheduled departures, while at Lisbon airport, 171 flights were delayed and almost 200 flights cancelled.  

Aena, which runs Madrid airport and 45 others across Spain, said it was relying on backup power supplies to operate, adding that the extent of the delays would depend on whether crews and passengers could get to the airports.

Spain gets 43 per cent of its electricity from wind and solar power, but grid and storage capacity has not kept pace with the country’s rapid development of renewable energy.

The country has long lamented being an “energy island” due to its poor connections with France.

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French grid operator RTE said parts of France had been briefly affected by the outage but that power had been quickly restored.

Additional reporting by Philip Georgiadis and Andy Bounds

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Trump to sign executive order highlighting sanctuary cities fighting immigration enforcement

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Trump to sign executive order highlighting sanctuary cities fighting immigration enforcement


Trump’s executive orders will total more than 140 during his first 100 days in office, which press secretary Karoline Leavitt said was more than the Biden administration had in four years.

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  • One Trump order will ‘unleash’ law enforcement, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump will sign two executive orders to bolster immigration enforcement and highlight which jurisdictions restrict cooperation with federal law enforcement, according to press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The signings April 28 come on the 99th day of Trump’s second term in office. His Republican administration is promoting tougher border enforcement as one of his central priorities, with what border czar Tom Homan called “historic low” border crossings.

“It’s quite simple: obey the law, respect the law and don’t obstruct federal immigration officials and law enforcement officials when they are simply trying to remove public safety threats from the nation’s communities,” Leavitt told reporters during a morning White House briefing. “This administration is determined to enforce our immigration laws.”

DOJ, DHS to highlight sanctuary cities: Leavitt

The first order aims to “strengthen and unleash America’s law enforcement to pursue and protect innocent citizens,” Leavitt said.

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The second order calls on Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to publish a list of the communities nicknamed “sanctuary” jurisdictions. Leavitt said the communities “obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration laws.”

Homan said he would visit Rochester, New York, on April 29 to support local law enforcement officers after several were disciplined for aiding a Homeland Security official who called for emergency assistance.

“Cops need to help cops, especially in an emergency situation. But they got disciplined,” Homan said. “I’m going up there to support the men and women of law enforcement.”

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Focus on sanctuary cities arrives amid court battles

The administration’s conflict with sanctuary cities and states is being fought in court. Leavitt’s announcement came after FBI agents arrested a local Wisconsin judge on April 18 for allegedly interfering with federal authorities trying to arrest an immigrant who didn’t have legal authorization to be in the country.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was charged with alleged interference with a federal law enforcement operation and unlawful concealment of an individual subject to arrest.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and others were trying to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican citizen previously removed from the U.S. and recently charged with multiple counts of domestic abuse-related battery. Dugan allegedly directed the federal authorities away from Flores-Ruiz after he appeared in her court.

Dugan had an initial appearance in court April 25 to be advised of her rights and her arraignment is scheduled May 15. Trump blasted the judge on April 27 as “terrible.”

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Lawsuits challenge validity of sanctuary cities

A group of 16 cities and counties filed a lawsuit against Trump’s policy withholding federal funding from so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco blocked the policy on April 24 by ruling the government was unlawfully trying to force cooperation from jurisdictions such as Minneapolis, Portland, Santa Fe and Seattle.

The Trump administration isn’t always the defendant. Bondi sued Illinois, Chicago and Cook County alleging they “obstruct” federal authorities from enforcing immigration laws.

Bondi also sued New York state and its Department of Motor Vehicles for a “green-light” law that limits cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

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“The American public doesn’t want illegal criminal aliens in their communities,” Leavitt said. “They made that quite clear on Nov. 5.”

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