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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Glycemic load

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When we eat a meal, we usually eat a combination of different foods. Some will be high GI, some intermediate, and some low GI. Some will be NO GI. Because animal proteins contain such a small percentage of carbohydrate, they are considered to have very little or no effect on blood-glucose levels, therefore they have NO GI value. But animal proteins (meat, cheese, etc) have high levels of saturated fats, which, in the interests of weight management and health, we want to limit. The GI value of a food is moderated by what else it contains, other than carbohydrates.

Adding a little animal protein or oil to a meal slows down digestion and so gives a feeling of satiety for longer. Always remembering, of course, to add even mono- or polyunsaturated oils in limited quantities, and avoid saturated fats when possible.

A salad with a vinegar or lemon dressing helps keep blood-glucose levels controlled. It has to do with acidity, so sour dough breads will do the same. A salad (low GI) added to a high GI meal will lower the overall GI load of the meal.

Soluble fibre, such as is found in rolled oats, lentils, beans and apples, is excellent for blood-glucose control. Insoluble fibre, however, is not digested at all, so has no impact.

The size of the particles in food products affects the GI. If the food item is made from a finely milled flour, then the GI will be high (white bread = 70), but if the flour used is whole grain, or stone-ground then the resulting product will, in most circumstances, be low(er) GI. The finer the particle, the easier (and faster) it is to digest.

By all means, buy products marked with a low GI rating - just be aware that there are other factors that come into play.
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Explaining the glycemic index

There must be hundreds, more probably thousands, of books available on the market devoted to the glycemic index. And if you Google ‘glycemic index’, you get over a million returns. So I will keep it simple. I will give you the basics, and you can ask questions afterwards, if you like, by leaving a comment. Everyone knows how to leave a comment, right? You click on the word 'comment' at the end of this post, and a comment box will pop up for you to fill in. Easy? Thank you.

The glycemic index (GI) is a rating of the carbohydrate content of a food, according to what impact the food in question has on blood-glucose levels, in comparison to a preset standard. The preset standard used is usually glucose = 100.

Foods with a GI in the range 70 - 100 are High GI. Anything between 55 - 70 is Intermediate GI. And anything lower than 55 is, of course, considered Low GI. We need to eat at least 50% of our carbohydrates from the Low GI group.

Foods with a high GI are digested and absorbed very quickly, releasing sugars (glucose) into the blood stream. This promotes an immediate and sometimes excessive insulin response. The insulin reduces the glucose levels in the blood stream by diverting the glucose to body tissue (muscles, organs), either for use now or by storing it as fat.

Eating high GI foods, then, produces what's known as a 'spike' - a lot of glucose is rapidly released into the blood stream and the insulin response removes the glucose from the blood stream just as fast. And you're hungry again an hour later, yes? Lots of glucose demands lots of insulin.

On the other hand, foods with a low GI are digested and absorbed more slowly, so that the body's demand for and release of insulin is retarded. You stay satisfied for longer.

Despite what I said about eating at least 50 % of our carbohydrates from the low GI group (and I still hold with that) we shouldn't eat low/no GI foods indiscriminately. Nor should we eat overly large portions of the healthy low/no GI foods - excess intake of any food can lead to weight gain (unless we're talking about broccoli or lettuce).

What we are aiming to achieve is good nutrition and weight management, without inopportune hunger pangs. We want (and need) all-day energy. We need to be able to cope with stress. We need to maintain our emotional equilibrium.

More on GI on Monday. See you then.

Barley

Today’s recipe (below) is a risotto, using barley instead of rice. Whole grain barley has a similar glyceamic index to rice, but eating barley can lower the blood glucose response to a meal for up to ten hours after eating – much longer than even brown rice. Barley contains eight of the essential amino acids necessary for health.

Barley is grown as a summer crop in temperate countries, and as a winter crop in tropical areas. Although it prefers cooler conditions, it is not really resistant to the cold. It has a short growing season and is fairly tolerant of drought. There are two varieties of barley – the 2-row and the 6-row. If you take a cross section of the 6-row variety it looks rather like a star anise. The 2-row variety has a row of barleycorns growing up either side of the stem. 2-row barley has a lower protein content than 6-row.

Barley is processed into flour, meal, flakes and grits. In Scotland, whole meal barley flour is used in porridge and gruel, and pearl barley is an essential ingredient in Scotch broth. And of course, you can’t make malt whiskey or beer without barley. German and English beers are traditionally brewed using the 2-row variety because the lower protein prevents the beer from going cloudy. Barley can be used as a substitute for coffee, and roasted barley is used to make a tea popular in Asia.

Many countries in the Southern hemisphere cultivate maize for animal fodder, but northern countries cultivate barley for this purpose purely because of the more suitable climatic conditions. Nearly half of the barley grown in the United States (over 4,5 million metric tonnes in 2007) is used as animal feed. Western Canadian beef is usually fed a ‘finishing’ diet of barley before going to market. According to figures for 2007 (total world production: 136 million metric tonnes), Russia is the world’s largest producer, followed by Canada, Spain and Germany, but since then there has been a slight decline in worldwide production.

In the eighteenth century, barleycorns were used as a system of measurement. It was generally agreed that there were three barleycorns to an inch. Although this method was superseded in the nineteenth century by a standard inch measurement, British and American shoe sizes are still based on one barleycorn equaling one third of and inch.

Try the risotto. It’s good.

Way to go

Now you know a bit about the different food groups, kilocalories and kilojoules, portion sizes and GI values. But this doesn't guide you to making healthier food choices.

Weight management is difficult enough - especially as we get older - and putting yourself on a restricted regimen only leads to depression, dissatisfaction and disillusionment. So dump the doomed diet discipline. The healthy style of eating still comes down to having controlled portions of a wide variety of foods from all the different food groups - with emphasis on vegetables and fruit. Eliminating foods you normally enjoy is not the way to go - a little of what you fancy does you good, and stops you feeling deprived.

Have a great weekend.

Examples and a link for GI values

I thought I'd better give you some examles of which foods are high, intermediate and low GI. This is by no means an extensive categorization. Go  here for loads of information, and a fairly extensive GI value list.

Vegetables - Low GI
Tomatoes, green beans, peas, sugar snap peas, bell peppers, cabbage, lettuce, cucumber, broccoli, etc.
Veg - Intermediate GI
Carrots, beetroot, spinach
Veg - High GI
Turnips, parsnips

Fruits - Low GI
Grapefruit, cherries, oranges, apples, kiwis, mango, pears, peaches, grapes etc.
Fruits - Intermediate GI
Banana, apricots, melon, pineapple, paw paw/papino
Fruits - High GI
Watermelon

Grains and starches - Low GI
All beans, lentils, oat bran, pasta, barley, rice (brown, wild, Tastic white), sweetcorn, sweet potato
Grains and starches - Intermediate GI
New potatoes, Basmati rice, pita bread, bran muffin, rye bread, white bread (high fibre)
Grains and starches - High GI
2-minute noodles, rice cakes, potatoes (boiled, mashed, baked).

The GI values of the different foods on your plate average out . So the more you pile on the low GI value foods, the lower the overall GI will be. You will stay fuller for longer and have more energy.

How did that food get on your plate?

... or rather, what was done to the food before it was dished up? I'm still talking about GI values.

Yesterday 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 has the same effect.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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, pasta and leafy vegetables like cabbage and spinach. Fibre helps protect against high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes.

What makes for low GI

Despite what I said yesterday about eating at least 50 % of our carbohydrates from the low GI group (and I still hold with that) we shouldn't eat low/no GI foods indiscriminately. Nor should we eat overly large portions of the healthy low/no GI foods - excess intake of any food can lead to weight gain (unless we're talking about broccoli or lettuce).

What we are aiming to achieve is good nutrition and weight management, without inopportune hunger pangs. We want (and need) all-day energy. We need to be able to cope with stress. We need to maintain our emotional equilibrium

When we eat a meal, we usually eat a combination of different foods. Some will be high GI, some intermediate, and some low GI. Some will be NO GI, because animal proteins contain such a small percentage of carbohydrate that they are considered to have very little or no effect on blood-glucose levels, therefore they have no GI value. But animal proteins (meat, cheese, etc) have high levels of saturated fats, which, in the interests of weight management and health, we want to limit. So we have to consider the GI value of a food in light of what else it contains, other than carbohydrates.

Adding a little animal protein or oil to a meal slows down digestion and so gives a feeling of satiety for longer. Always remembering, of course, to add only mono- or polyunsaturated oils in limited quantities.

A salad with a vinegar or lemon dressing helps keep blood-glucose levels controlled. It has to do with acidity, so sour dough breads will do the same. A salad (low GI) added to a high GI meal will lower the overall GI of the meal.

Soluble fibre, such as is found in rolled oats, lentils, beans and apples, is excellent for blood-glucose control. Insoluble fibre, however, is not digested at all, so has no impact.

The size of the particles in food products effects the GI. If the food item is made from a finely milled flour, then the GI will be high (white bread = 70), but if the flour used is whole grain, or stone-ground then the resulting product will, in most circumstances, be low GI. The finer the particle, the easier (and faster) it is to digest.

By all means, buy products marked with a low GI rating - just be aware that other factors come into play

The Glycemic Index

There must be hundreds, more probably thousands, of books available on the market devoted to the glycemic index. And if you google it, you get over a million returns. So I will keep it simple. I will give you the basics, and you can ask questions afterwards in a comment. Everyone knows how to leave a comment, right? You click on the word 'comment' at the end of this post, and a comment box will pop up for you to fill in. Easy? Thank you.

The glycemic index (GI) is a rating of the carbohydrate content of a food, according to what impact the food in question has on blood-glucose levels, in comparison to a preset standard. The preset standard used is usually glucose = 100.

Foods with a GI in the range 70 - 100 are High GI. Anything between 55 - 70 is Intermediate GI. And anything lower than 55 is, of course, considered Low GI. We need to eat at least 50% of our carbohydrates from the Low GI group.

Foods with a high GI are digested and absorbed very quickly, releasing sugars (glucose) into the blood stream. This promotes an immediate and sometimes excessive insulin response. The insulin reduces the glucose levels in the blood stream by diverting the glucose to body tissue (muscles, organs), either for use now or by storing it as fat.

Eating high GI foods, then, produces what's known as a 'spike' - a lot of glucose is rapidly released into the blood stream and the insulin response removes the glucose from the blood stream just as fast. And you're hungry again an hour later, yes? Lots of glucose demands lots of insulin.

On the other hand, foods with a low GI are digested and absorbed more slowly, so that the body's demand for and release of insulin is retarded. You stay satisfied for longer.

This might seem an odd place to stop, but I don't want to keep you from your work. It's the beginning of a new week and a new month, so come back tomorrow for more.