So in essence, malto can certainly "make you fat" compared to other smarter choices.
In essence, true, but in the context of a weight gainer, I think not.
My arguments:
1) The GI is not a good predicter of a carb's tendency to result in fat accumulation.
2) Malto in a weight gainer is about as healthy as oats, and hella more convenient.
I can't swallow the "high GI = adipose hypertrophy" pill without frowning upon potatoes --- and I can't bring myself to do that. Common sense revolts at the notion. I might seem obsessive for getting so hung up on one lil' starchy carb, but it only takes one contradiction to disprove a theory.
I understand the nutritional considerations. Regardless, my conceit is not about nutritional density, but about fat accumulation. If the high GI of maltodextrin(1:137, 2:105) causes people to fear fat accumulation, it follows that fructose(1:26, 2:20) would be a better choice than even oats(1:78, 2:49). And potatoes(1:116, 2:98) should be assiduously avoided. Herein I sense a contradiction.
I reiterate: I understand that oats and potatoes are more nutritionally sound than maltodextrin and fructose, and that whole foods are superior to powdered foods (ignoring the pre/post-wo scenario). Yet people still buy whey protein. Why? Convenience.
And that is the chief benefit of a weight gainer --- convenience. If you can get all the calories you need to grow from whole foods, by all means, pursue that route. But the real world tends to restrict our ability to attain the optimal. Be it a shortage of time --- or rather, a sufficiently high opportunity cost of time --- or the inability to stomach 5,000 calories a day of solid matter, there is good reason to consider an alternative to The Real Thing(tm). By the same token, anybody who's tried to drink a shake containing 40 grams of whey protein and 80 grams of carbs in oat form --- and let me tell you, that works out to a
lot more than 80 grams of oats --- understands the value of maltodextrin.
The preceding two paragraphs are an insurance policy against anyone mentioning the nutrional superiority of oats to maltodextrin --- I get it. That's just not the point.
I don't see why maltodextrin will cause a greater accumulation of fat than oats, because I don't see how a higher GI causes a greater accumulation of fat than a lower GI, because I don't see how potatoes cause a greater accumulation of fat than fructose. On the flipside, if the above is wrong, I don't see why oats are superior to fructose for adding calories without adding fat. I'm operating under the assumption that the shake in which the candidate carb would be added to provides no more than 1/3 of your daily caloric intake, with the rest coming from nutritious whole foods. If we're talking about which nutrient should be your "desert island" carb, then obviously oats win.
Waxing scientific for a bit, the GI is commonly thought to measure the effect a particular carb has on insulin levels. Such is not the case. The GI measures how rapidly a particular carb can be broken down into glucose. Generally speaking, the value is lower for complex carbs, and higher for simple carbs, though there are notable exceptions (see above).
Further, testing is conducted in a fasted state, and nothing but carb is consumed. With 6 meals daily, and a consistently even macronutrient break down per meal, bodybuilders are generally in a state antithetical to that in which GI is measured.
Now, the point of my polemic is not to piss in the oatmeal of the pro-oat-anti-malto people. I just want to offer an alternative perspective to those who have been scared out of trying Supermass 600. In truth, I
do believe that malto is more likely to result in fat accumulation than oatmeal, though this is not because of its GI. More importantly, in the context of adding calories to a bulking diet in protein-shake form,
I don't think it's going to make a quantifiable difference. Though endos may need to tred more carefully, if you're an ecto or a meso, and you take a serving or two of Supermass a day alongside a smart regimen of 4-5 solid meals, you will be primed for maximum muscle growth with minimal fat. The same could be said for rolling-your-own gainer using oats and whey --- you'll just feel like you're drinking kitty litter.
My $0.02.