Glycemic Index

All carbohydrates increase blood sugar levels (and so have a glycemic index) and therefore cause insulin to be released from the pancreas in order to control the amount of glucose in the blood. The more glucose that has been made available in the blood, the more insulin is released to control it. The relative effciency with which carbohydrates do this is known as the glycemic index.The importance of the glycemic index is that it predicts how much insulin will be released and therefore, how the body will respond. For example metabolise fat (use it for fuel - low glycemic index) or store excess energy as fat (high glycemic index).

This happens in two ways.

Firstly, the presence of insulin (high glycemic index) instructs the liver that energy requirements are more than being met by current food intake, so the breakdown of fat to provide energy from body stores is unnecessary. Therefore, insulin (and so high glycemic index) stops the body from burning fat for energy.

Secondly, and at the same time, excess sugar in the blood is quickly targeted to be stored for later energy requirements and is converted to fat. So, insulin ( and high glycemic index) also causes the body to store more fat.

If the blood sugar level remains high, i.e. with really high glycemic index foods, more insulin is released in an effort to reduce it.

From these two very simple rules, it should be easy to see that any high glycemic index food that causes sudden increases in blood sugar and therefore massive release of insulin is likely to lead to increased fat production and storage.

Not surprisingly, therefore, people who eat a lot of sugary foods and other foods with a high glycemic index, such as refined flour, potatoes, white rice and cereal-based foods are more likely to retain fat than those that don't. Unfortunately, this is exactly what we are told to do by modern medicine and Government, who clearly have no idea about weight control.

The following table gives an indication of the relative glycemic index of various foods.

Glycemic index of popular foods

High glycemic index	Medium glycemic index	Low glycemic index
Maltose (beer)*	Rye bread (crispbread)	Oatmeal porridge
Cooked parsnips	Muesli (no sugar)	Wholewheat pasta
Cooked carrots	Brown rice	Sweet potato
White Rice	Cooked beets	Dried Peas
Biscuits / cookies	Garden peas	Apples
Baked potato	Boiled potato	Pears
Cornflakes / cereal	Wholewheat bread	Whole milk
Bagels	Corn, polenta	Kidney beans
White Bread	Sultanas / raisins	Lentils
Corn chips	Orange juice	Soybeans
Mangoes	Oatmeal biscuits / cookies	High water content fruits (melon etc)
Ripe bananas	White pasta	Apple juice
Papaya	Buckwheat	black-eye peas
Rice cakes	Pinto beans	Green vegetables

*the Glycemic index of Maltose is actually higher than that of glucose. i.e. malt and it's products (like beer) actually stimulate more insulin release than pure sugar!

What is clear from this table is that different varieties of similar foods have different effects. For example, boiled potatoes have a lower Glycemic index than baked potatoes and wholewheat varieties of bread and pasta are much better than their white counterparts. This effect on glycemic index is explained below.

The effect of eating high glycemic index foods consistently is to lead to constantly high insulin levels. In this situation, the body becomes accustomed to these high insulin levels and starts to respond to them less effectively over time. As high glycemic index foods are eaten further, this progresses, more and more insulin is required to have the same effect on the tissues. This phenomenon is known as insulin resistance, and is the first step towardsdiabetes.

The glycemic index situation is made worse if the body has insufficientchromium. Chromium helps insulin to exert its effect on the tissues, encouraging sugar uptake and thereby reducing blood sugar. In the absence of chromium, insulin is much less effective, sugar levels stay high and MORE insulin is secreted in an effort to control them

The Good News

Thankfully, it is not all bad news. Whilst It is best to avoid foods with a high

glycemic index, they often have direct alternatives with a moderate or even low glycemic index. This is because the insulin-stimulating effect of carbohydrates is greatly reduced in the presence of fibre, as found in some fruits and the wheatgerm present in whole wheat. This moderates the insulin response, spreading out the absorption of carbohydrate over a prolonged timespan and so reduces the amount of insulin released (lower glycemic index.

In addition, the use of chromium supplements makes insulin's job easier, helping reduce blood glucose (and therefore insulin) to normal levels.

In this way, the effect of brown rice and wholewheat alternatives to white flour products is much lower, and therefore much less detrimental to health. This is why it is best to ALWAYS use wholewheat / wholegrain versions of these foods, with a lower glycemic index.

Glycemic Index, Insulin resistance and diabetes.

Whilst diabetes is discussed elsewhere on this site, it is worth touching here on the role of insulin resistance in the development of the disease.

Diabetes is the inability of the body to produce enough insulin to control blood sugar. As a consequence, those who suffer from diabetes suffer from a number of problems related to the massive spikes of sugar immediately following a meal and subsequent troughs in between meals, which, if unchecked can lead very quickly to coma and death.

It has long been known that frank diabetes is often, indeed usually preceded by a period of insulin resistance, in which, as described above, more and more insulin is released with each subsequent dose of high glycemic index carbohydrate in order to overcome the increasing insensitivity of the tissues to insulin's "demands".

Eventually, the body reaches a stage where, no matter how much insulin is produced, the tissues no longer respond and blood sugar remains unchecked. In such a situation, the pancreas can "give up" completely, and all insulin secretion may stop. Whether this happens or not, diabetes is the result, and huge doses of insulin are required to be injected to overcome the problem, regardless of glycemic index. Needless to say, the high insulin levels mean that many diabetics are overweight. This adds further stress to the system.

Prior to this "end stage" diabetes, there is much to be gained from limiting the intake of high (and even medium) Glycemic index foods (not just sugar, as advised by medicine) and taking an appropriate dose of chromium supplements to make the existing insulin more effective.

Weight management foods

How to control weight permanently without constant dieting

Weight control has been one of the major health concerns of the Western World for many years. Obesity in the UK is fast approaching approaching the chart-topping statistics of the USA and it's not just the adults that are getting bigger - child weight management is an increasing worry.

All this is happening despite the concentration on high carbohydrate, low fat, low protein diets which we are told are required for weight management. In fact, the rate of increase is accelerating, suggesting that this might not be the best way to control weight at all.

Macronutrients - Carbohydrate, protein & fat

Everyone has heard of the concept of a "balanced diet" and most of this probably try, in at least some ways to achieve this. Unfortunately, there is no universal agreement on what the balance should be, and it is probable that the overemphasis on low-fat (a product of the cholesterol myth) is, at least in part, responsible.

In both the USA and UK, dieticians propose diets that get most of their energy from carbohydrates, although the proportions vary. The realities are somewhat different. In the UK the average diet gets about 44% of energy from fat, 15% from protein and 41% from carbohydrate. In the USA, the figures are 48% fat, and 26% each for protein and carbohydrates.

This as if the diets of the two countries are very high-fat, but when you consider that fat metabolism produces twice as much energy per gram as either carbohydrate or protein, fat content of the diet appears much lower.

Clearly, the diets proposed by Government are not working. What is needed is a simple, long-term solution, free from vested interests and dogma.

The difference between diet and dieting.

Dieting, or the temporary change in what we eat in order to fulfil a specific objective over a given timeframe, has been the mainstay of weight control for so long that it is difficult to believe it will not continue indefinitely. Apart from the fact that many diets are unpalatable, restrictive, unpleasant or downright dangerous, those who follow a prescribed diet for a few days, weeks or months invariably return to their old habits again afterwards - that is human nature. Diets don't work in the long term!

Returning to your previous diet means that you will return to your previous shape / size weight - there is no getting away from it. The only way to overcome this, therefore, is to make a complete and permanent change to the things that you eat. This, in turn, can only be achieved if the food you are to eat is attractive, tasty, varied and enjoyable as well as being nutritious.

Thankfully, this is not hard to achieve, but before we propose the right way to achieve it, we must first consider what is is that's wrong with the Western diet.

Carbohydrate craziness.

For many years, dieticians and their ilk have insisted that the ideal diet is high in carbohydrates. Whilst, in general, most fruits and vegetables are (when grown on soil that has not been depleted of its minerals or chemically poisoned) both tasty and nutritious, most people don't think of these as carbohydrates and instead think of pasta, bread, potatoes and rice - commonly known as "complex carbohydrates".

As we have shown, these foods are high glycaemic index (GI) foods, meaning that they readily convert to blood sugar and stimulate the release of insulin, which both stops fat metabolism and encourages fat storage. this situation is made much worse in the absence of sufficient chromium, which helps insulin to encourage sugar uptake by the tissues, so reducing blood sugar. Lack of chromium is known to be one of the risk factors of developing diabetes.

Note - the body is stimulated to store fat not by eating fat, but by eating high GI carbohydrates. This is the principle contributor to obesity on both the USA and Britain, not least because many people rely these days on fast food and prepared meals, which not only contain high GI foods, but also sugar and trans fats, which we will deal with next.

One of the best ways to counter this is to convert to a low grain or no-grain diet.

Margarine kills - stick to butter!

In addition to eating the wrong type of carbohydrates, many people also eat not only too little fat, but the wrong kind of fat.

Fats derived from animals are not only completely natural, they have been part of our diet for millennia. Many of the "unsaturated" fats sold nowadays, however, have only been in existence for a few decades and are not natural at all. Top of this list are the trans-fats that are produced when making hydrogenated vegetable oils.

These trans-fats, created by the very people who started the cholesterol myth, have been directly linked to both heart disease and cancer, which cannot be shown for animal fats. In fact, when proper grass-fed meat is consumed (grain-fed meat has different nutritional values), we gain many benefits other than just the protein and fat content, including vitamins, minerals and trace elements.

The fats most often missing from the diet are often the most important. In a recent study, over 25% of all Americans tested had so little omega-3 fatty acid in their blood that it was undetectable, despite the fact that this essential fatty acid is one of the main components of the brain and nerves among many other cellular functions.