A good guide to good carbs: The glycemic index




If you have diabetes, you know all too well that when you eat carbohydrates, your blood sugar goes up. The total amount of carbs you consume at a meal or in a snack mostly determines what your blood sugar will do. But the food itself also plays a role. A serving of white rice has almost the same effect as eating pure table sugar—a quick, high spike in blood sugar. A serving of lentils has a slower, smaller effect.
Picking good sources of carbs can help you control your blood sugar and your weight. Even if you don’t have diabetes, eating healthier carbohydrate-rich foods can help ward off a host of chronic conditions, from heart disease to various cancers to, well, diabetes.
One way to choose foods is with the glycemic index (GI). This tool measures how much a food boosts blood sugar.
The glycemic index rates the effect of a specific amount of a food on blood sugar compared with the same amount of pure glucose. A food with a glycemic index of 28 boosts blood sugar only 28% as much as pure glucose. One with a GI of 95 acts like pure glucose.

High glycemic foods result in a quick spike in insulin and blood sugar (also known as blood glucose). Low glycemic foods have a slower, smaller effect.

Using the glycemic index
Using the glycemic index is easy: choose foods in the low GI category instead of those in the high GI category (see below), and go easy on those in between.
  • Low glycemic index (GI of 55 or less): Most fruits and vegetables, beans, minimally processed grains, pasta, low-fat dairy foods, and nuts.
  • Moderate glycemic index (GI 56 to 69): White and sweet potatoes, corn, white rice, couscous, breakfast cereals such as Cream of Wheat and Mini Wheats.
  • High glycemic index (GI of 70 or higher): White bread, rice cakes, most crackers, bagels, cakes, doughnuts, croissants, most packaged breakfast cereals.
You can see the values for 100 commons foods and get links to more at www.health.harvard.edu/glycemic.

Swaps for lowering glycemic index
Instead of this high-glycemic index food Eat this lower-glycemic index food
White rice Brown rice or converted rice
Instant oatmeal Steel-cut oats
Cornflakes Bran flakes
Baked potato Pasta, bulgur
White bread Whole-grain bread
Corn Peas or leafy greens

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FASTING - Is it good for health?

Intentionally skipping or delaying meals, known as fasting, is an unusual practice for many people, but it’s gaining popularity as a way to prevent disease and maintain a healthy body weight. Proponents of intermittent fasting believe it’s better for your health to constrain your eating to just a portion of the day, allowing your body to go stretches of 12 hours or more without food. Intermittent fasting is not a diet, but a method of scheduling your meals to optimize how your body uses nutrients. This pattern of eating doesn’t change the total number of calories you consume each day, but alters the frequency with which you eat these calories.   Maxine Barish-Wreden, M.D. opens new window , a complementary and integrative medicine physician with the   Sutter Medical Foundation Opens new window , says doctors and researchers are realizing that our current eating patterns are contributing to the health epidemics of obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes. She says intermitte...
Read more

World Renown Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong.. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries,today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact. I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled “opinion makers.”  Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol. The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice. It Is Not Working! These recommendations are no lon...
Read more

Detection Tools for Alzheimer

Image
I posted earlier on the  Behaviors of Alzheimer patients . Here is an article on the detection tools. Early Detection Alzheimer’s Tests: What’s New By Sarah Stevenson on January 26, 2013 Read about the growing arsenal of Alzheimer’s tests, from simple memory testing for mild cognitive impairment to brand-new brain imaging applications. Photo credit: Akira Ohgaki When it comes to diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease, the prevailing mantra is “the earlier the better.” The problem, of course, is that there are many potential causes for dementia, and by the time doctors are able to detect mental decline, Alzheimer’s has already begun to irreversibly damage the brain. Not only that, until recently it was only possible to confirm an Alzheimer’s diagnosis through posthumous brain examination. Cutting-edge research in the field of Alzheimer’s testing promises to change the way we diagnose the disease, and that’s encouraging news. With a new battery of tests in the arsenal, doctors...
Read more