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Wednesday, March 2, 2011

6 ways to control blood glucose levels

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What was done to your food before it was dished up? I'm still talking about GI values.

I mentioned that particle size has impact on the GI value of a food. Any sort of processing -grinding, milling, mashing, beating, liquidizing, refining - reduces particle size and raises the GI value. Heat and cooking increases the ease of digestion, and so also raises the GI value.

Here are six ways to reduce the resultant rise in blood-glucose levels.

1. Eat more slowly. Research shows that eating more slowly raises blood-glucose levels more gently.

2. Add lots of low GI vegetables to your plate - especially salads. Salads are usually raw, or if not raw, at least chilled. Adding low GI veg will slow down the rate of digestion. Slower digestion equals a slower release of glucose into the blood stream, and a slower release of glucose leads to a more gradual insulin reaction.

3. Eat regularly. What you eat at breakfast, strangely enough, impacts on what you eat at lunch time, and lunch impacts on dinner; so a low GI, low fat breakfast - for example fresh fruit and oat porridge - will keep you going until lunchtime without a problem. You will not then be tempted to cram high GI foods into your mouth in an attempt to assuage your hunger. Hunger as a result of eating high GI foods, or of not eating at all, will make you overeat at the earliest opportunity.

4. Add low GI foods to your meal. Whole-grains, beans, lentils. These all fill you up, and keep you satisfied for longer.

5. Eat in-between meal snacks - fruit is the healthiest and easiest snack, or crudites.

6. Eat fibre. Most of us don't eat anywhere near the recommended 30 - 40gm a day. Fibre is filling and satisfying. Get it from oats, beans, wholegrain pasta and leafy vegetables like cabbage and spinach. Fibre helps protect against high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes.
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1 comment:

Grumpy1 said...
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