Dear Joe.
Buckwheat was a central european tradition. Not sure if we did, we could only find buckwheat floor. I remember whole kernel spelt, quinoa which were good. . Boiled oat kernels I did not find yummy unless you boil for 24 hours like the Scots and turn it into mush which is not good for diabetics.
Hey,isn’t chocolate one of the basic food groups?
I never met a chocolate I didn’t like.
Chocolate is one of the basic food groups & a gift from the gods. Haven’t you seen the new chocolate food pyramid:)
I haven’t seen the pyramid but itstill works for me !
I have a cup that says on it: Let go of the chocolate and no one will get hurt.
Buckwheat groats have a stronger taste than most of us are use to…I learn to eat kasha from a Russian teacher Ihad.
I’m afraid that like most things ahead of their day, the chocolate pyramid is slow in being accepted:)
Love your cup!
Just saw the Chocolate Food Pyramid; Looks perfectly correct to me.
With all said and done you’re the one who most decide what works for you. So let us know how it works for you .
I just read: Glycemic index was compared to standard diets that are recommended to diabetes ,including high fiber diet.Glycemic diet did better in lowering A1c and raising HDL in diabetics than other diets . This was the first studyto compare gylcemic index to other diabetic diets. JAMA Dec2008
Actually the Glycemic Index was a study done the Human Nutrition Unit, School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences, University of Sydney. All those diets and books are based on their SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.
Since then other universites have added to the data with their own studies.
I was advised by a doctor recently to go low glycemic, & bought a book about it. The New Glucose Revolution - Low GI Gluten Free Eating Made Easy, (I’m gluten free). Book is fine, I just have issues with the concept of this diet.
I do have to agree with some of the comments online here. You should pay attention to what your meter is telling you. I am figuring out that I have a lot of food intolerances which initially manifest as blood sugar spikes.
When they’re really bad, I go up over 300 & stay there for a few hours. No amount of insulin brings them down, until the resistance “breaks” & I suddenly crash. This was routinely happening with agave nectar, which is suppossed to be the low GI sweetner of choice!
My thought about this diet is that it doesn’t take into consideration our already impaired glucose tolerances to specific foods. The index is based on “healthy” people eating different things & then monitoring their blood sugar response. Every diabetic is going to have a totally different response based on how the foods affect YOU.
Basically, I think the research is interesting, but there’s a lot more to be learned here.
Here are a couple of related links:
Glycemic Index at dLife:
http://www.dlife.com/dLife/do/ShowContent/inspiration_expert_advice/expert_columns/mendosa_glycemic_index.html
Glycemic Index on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index
I did the glycemic index diet with some success a number of years ago – it was a lot of work but effective. I have had the same experience with pasta versus potato. Foods in Canada, Great Britain and Australia are packaged with GI information. But they are not in US. The trouble is getting consistent information on easy to get foods.
Few dieticians or physicians in the US have information about it. Initially started in UK, and US docs received a lot of bad press about it. Now that Glucerna is on the market in the US – we hear less negative press about it.
Hope it works for you.
Why is this so hard? The glycemic index doesn’t gauge the amount of carbs that you eat, it measures the resultant increase in glucose levels. The GI has always been controversial in the US (see the Scam note below), mostly, I think, due to the Not Invented Here Syndrome. The concept came out of a school in Toronto, Canada. Most of the research is being done in Australia. Why the US diabetes medical community has panned the concept is a puzzle.
A writer by the name of Liz Applegate helped me understand. If eating a bagel will raise my glucose by, say, 100 mg/dl within 30 minutes, then smearing two tablespoons of peanut butter on that same bagel will reduce the glucose spike to 50 mg/dl or less in the same 30 minutes. The fat and protein in the peanut butter slows the carbohydrate absorption/conversion in the gut. Calories, of course, go up, but if I am riding my bike on a 20 miler, who cares?
I have a calorie counter on my heart rate monitor. I wear the monitor to give me a warning if I start to go anerobic. I have no idea how accurate it is, but there is a certain satisfaction when it scrolls up to “2,000 calories” expended during the bike ride…
The same thing applies to grains. According to the “theory”, the more “complex” the grain, the harder they are to digest and the longer it takes to convert to glucose in your system. I kind of thought that this was a “good” thing???
Any thoughts or opinions?
Rock
Hi Rock,
I subscribe to MedScape (a medical newsletter, intended for doctors, but anyone can subscribe to it), and there have been some clinical studies that showed good results for low GI diets in controlling blood sugar and also having positive effects on cholesterol.
The whole numbers thing can get crazy and complicated, but I think what you’re doing is just common sense–the more “complex” and less refined a grain (or any food) is, the better it is for you. Adding protein to balance carbs is also a simple but effective strategy. And I think that because the fat in nuts is plant-based rather than animal-based, it’s “good fat” anyway.