Written by Catherine Saxelby
on Wednesday, 11 September 2019.
Tagged: carbohydrates, carbs, healthy cooking, healthy eating, low carb, lower carb, no-carb, nutrition
There’s a lot of talk about low carb and lower carb diets these days. While I’m not a fan of the Low Carb (think less than 20 grams per day) High Fat movement, I do think that the modern Western diet relies too heavily on carbohydrates, especially the refined types. It’s not that hard to reduce them and reduce the GI load on your body. Take a look…
Most of us know which foods are high in carbs but here’s a reminder of 10 of the highest (in average amounts per 100 grams):
Now, not all carbs are created equal. Here we mean carbs to comprise the usual starchy types such as rice, potatoes, pasta and breads as well as the sugary types such as added sugar, honey and similar sweet syrups. They can be low, medium or high GI and have a low, medium or high GL. What does this mean for you? I discussed the difference between GI and GL on the website here, but here’s the short version.
GI measures the quality of the carbohydrate – in other words, how much a carbohydrate will affect blood sugar. It is a ranking of foods from 0 to 100 that tells us whether a carbohydrate food will raise blood sugar (glucose) levels dramatically, moderately or just a little.
The effect of a carbohydrate food on blood sugar levels is not only determined by its GI or carbohydrate quality but also by the amount of carbohydrate in a particular food.
Glycaemic Load (GL) is the term used to describe the overall effect of these two factors on blood sugar.
For example:
From this we can see the potato will produce a blood sugar rise three times that of the apple. When foods have similar amounts of carbohydrate, GI will have the greatest influence on blood sugars. When the amount of carbohydrate in a portion differs, the best way to predict blood sugar effects will be via the GL.
There is good evidence that swapping to a lower GL helps with stabilising blood glucose and weight.
Some nutritionists use the following cut-off figures for a food's Glycaemic Load:
Low - Less than 10 points
Medium - 11-19 points
High - Over 20 points
Alternatively aim to keep the total GL per day under 100.
I called this post ‘Cutting carbs the easy way”. So here it is. We’re looking to reduce the carbs that have the most impact on blood glucose levels. So, we’re looking to remove those foods with a high GI. Luckily the worst of these foods are what we would label junk and/or discretionary foods. (See my posts here and here.)
These are the Ultra Processed Foods (UPFs). Here are my top 10 UPFs to avoid:
Forget UPFs. Reduce heavily processed food – the white flour products, and those containing sugar, honey, jams and syrups. Examples are white bread, pastries, muffins, sweet cake-like desserts, doughnuts and confectionery.
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