Development of a comprehensive food glycomic database and its application: Associations between dietary carbohydrates and insulin resistance

Christopher Suarez; Shawn Ehlers Cheang; Jules A Larke; Jiani Jiang; Cheng-Yu Charlie Weng; Aaron Stacy; Garret Couture; Ye Chen; Nikita P Bacalzo Jr; Jennifer T Smilowitz; J Bruce German; David A Mills; Danielle G Lemay; Carlito B Lebrilla

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.142977

Development of a comprehensive food glycomic database and its application: Associations between dietary carbohydrates and insulin resistance

Food Chem. 2025 Jan 20:473:142977. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.142977. Online ahead of print.

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA; Foods for Health Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
² USDA Agricultural Research Service, Western Human Nutrition Research Center, Davis, CA, USA.
³ Department of Nutrition, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
⁴ Foods for Health Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA; Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
⁵ Foods for Health Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA; Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA; Department of Viticulture and Enology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA; Foods for Health Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA; Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA. Electronic address: cblebrilla@ucdavis.edu.

PMID: 39864179
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.142977

Abstract

Carbohydrates are an integral part of a healthy diet. The molecular compositions of carbohydrates encompass a very broad range of unique structures with many being ill-defined. This vast structural complexity is distilled into vague categories such as total carbohydrates, sugars, starches, and soluble/insoluble fibers. Structural elucidation of the food glycome is until recently extremely slow and immensely challenging. Dietary carbohydrates, including monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, glycosidic linkages, and polysaccharides were determined for the most consumed foods in the US consisting of 250 common foods using a multiglycomic platform. The food glycome was then correlated with clinical data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) consisting of dietary recalls from 13,550 adults to determine associations between dietary carbohydrates, their structural features and insulin resistance. Several features were more powerful predictors compared to traditional measures indicating the need for molecular fine-scale food carbohydrate data in guiding precision nutrition initiatives and clinical studies.