Making small choices in your diet can have a big impact on your health, energy level and waistline. You don’t have to make dramatic changes in eating habits to eat better. Even small modifications in your daily diet can pay big health dividends. Think of foods in terms of ‘nutrients’ rather than ‘good’ or ‘bad.’
The following suggestions are from Glycemic Index Research out of the University of Sydney, Australia (reported, GI News April 2008):
- Aim to eat at least two servings of fruit and five servings of vegetables every day, preferably of three or more different colors. Fill half your dinner plate with veggies.
- If you are a big potato eater, consider replacing half the potato with cannellini beans.
- Choose a low GI bread. Look for a really grainy bread, true sourdough bread or a soy and linseed bread.
- Replace high GI breakfast flakes (real glucose gushers) with low GI alternatives like natural muesli, traditional porridge oats or one of the lower GI processed breakfast cereals.
- Look for lower GI rices such as basmati, Doongara Clever Rice or Moolgiri medium grain rice and choose less processed foods or low GI whole grains such as traditional rolled or steel-cut oats, or quinoa for porridge or pearl barley, buckwheat, bulgur, whole kernel rye, or whole wheat kernels.
- Eat legumes (beans, chickpeas and lentils) often – home cooked or canned.
- Include at least one low GI carb with every meal. You’ll find them in four of the food groups: fruit and vegetables; bread and cereals; legumes; low fat dairy or soy alternatives.
- Choose low GI snacks – fresh fruit, a dried fruit and nut mix, low fat milk or yogurt.
- Vinegar and lemon or lime juices slow stomach emptying and lower your blood glucose response to the carbohydrate with which they are eaten. Get the salad habit and toss it in a vinaigrette dressing.
- Limit refined flour products – cookies, cakes, pastries, pies, crackers, biscuits irrespective of their fat and sugar content.
Two extra tips to reduce blood glucose spikes:
Incorporate a lean protein source with every meal – lean meat, skinless chicken, eggs, fish or seafood, or low fat dairy, legumes or tofu if you are vegetarian.
Remember portion caution with carb-rich foods such as pasta, noodles and low GI rices. It’s all too easy to over-eat them. While they may be low GI choices themselves, eating lots of them will have a marked effect on your blood glucose.
Low Glycemic Index (GI) and Low Glycemic Load (GL) foods have been proven in studies to be beneficial: dieting; weight loss; obesity; diabetes; balancing blood sugar; sustained energy; sport nutrition; mental performance; acne; eye health; macular degeneration; heart disease and forms of cancer. See also Low GI Diet, Low GI Recipes, Low GI Food, Low GI Eating.
Copyright 2008, Saul Katz
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