## 3 Results and Discussion
### Glycaemic Index  
The glycaemic analysis was conducted to observe the effect of incorporating instant noodles with 5% of WEM mushroom on the postprandial blood glucose level among participants in this study. Figure 2 illustrates the mean postprandial blood glucose level within two hours for 10 female subjects with normal body mass index (BMI) who consumed the test food, containing 50 g of carbohydrates. The baseline for the blood glucose level was comparable and started to rise drastically within 15 min after consuming the test meals and peaked at 30 min, whereas the control noodles recorded higher blood glucose levels \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Control Noodles** & **5\% WEM Noodles** & **WEM Powder** \\ \hline IC\({}_{50}\) DPPH (mg/mL) & 19.53 \(\pm\) 0.51 \({}^{\text{c}}\) & 13.00 \(\pm\) 0.36 \({}^{\text{b}}\) & 0.85 \(\pm\) 0.11 \({}^{\text{a}}\) \\ FRAP (uM FeSO\({}_{4}\)/g) & 4.01 \(\pm\) 0.04 \({}^{\text{c}}\) & 7.64 \(\pm\) 0.08 \({}^{\text{b}}\) & 17.73 \(\pm\) 0.83 \({}^{\text{a}}\) \\ TPC (mg GAE/g) & 0.93 \(\pm\) 0.08 \({}^{\text{c}}\) & 1.19 \(\pm\) 0.24 \({}^{\text{b}}\) & 5.81 \(\pm\) 0.09 \({}^{\text{a}}\) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} Results were expressed as means \(\pm\) standard deviation. (\(n\) = 3). Different superscripts in the same row were significantly different (\(p<0.05\)).  
\end{table} 
Table 5: The antioxidant activities and TPC of wood ear mushroom (WEM) powder and noodles incorporated with WEM and without WEM (control). than the incorporated noodles with 5% WEM powder (\(p<0.05\)). Subsequently, the blood glucose level of the control noodles exhibited a drastic drop between 30 to 60 min before a steady fall at 90 min, and remained constant until 120 min. Meanwhile, the blood glucose level of the incorporated noodles saw a gradual drop from 30 min to 120 min. At 120 min, the average blood glucose level of the control noodles was higher (5.5 mmol/L) than the noodles incorporated with 5% WEM (5.1 mmol/L) (\(p<0.05\)). It was confirmed that adding WEM powder reduced the peak and lowered the glucose concentration of digested WEM noodles in blood vessels, hence, exhibiting the hypoglycaemic effect. The observation was in agreement with previous findings that the incorporation of 5% of mushroom powder was able to exhibit a hypoglycaemic effect [23, 65]. Numerous animal studies have demonstrated the hypoglycaemic effect of WEM by observing the effect of powder supplementation in the diet of diabetic mice, which reduces the plasma glucose, insulin, urinary glucose, and food intake [8]. On a normal occasion, carbohydrates were broken down into glucose once the test food was ingested. The blood glucose level would spike drastically until reaching the highest concentration within 30 min and fall back to normal glucose level after 2 h, depending on the type of food consumed [73]. Nonetheless, the presence of fibre-rich ingredients, such as WEM powder, interferes with digestion and delays the gastrointestinal tract emptying process affecting the absorption of nutrients, particularly glucose [74]. An in vitro study mimicking the behaviour of enzymatic digestion was conducted by [PERSON] et al. who observed that the polysaccharides of _Auricularia_ mushroom could form highly viscous substances and retard glucose diffusion by forming a barrier that interferes with starch hydrolysis [24]. In addition, another study found a negative correlation between the glycaemic response and total dietary fibre of mushroom powder. High amounts of dietary fibre could lead to the alteration of physicochemical properties and the digestibility of noodles [65]. This condition could explain the graph pattern in Figure 2.  
Macronutrients, such as fat and protein, could influence the postprandial blood glucose responses to food, but the effect of those nutrients is more pronounced in mixed meals in a dose-dependent manner [33].