Carbohydrates & Glycemic Index – Made Simple

I use to love the “Made Simple” series of books. This is way before the “Books for Dummies” series of books, so I’m probably dating myself. Some how “Dummy Books” just don’t sit well with me. Call me old fashion, but I’d rather have a book or article that says, “Here – read this. We’ve taken the complicated out of the subject and make it simple to understand.”

So that’s what you get with this article. A new, simple and easy to understand look at carbohydrates and the glycemic index.

For decades now, many experts have urged over-weight people to seriously limit or eliminate carbohydrates altogether from their diets. We’ve been told that carbs are bad for us, especially if we’re obese.   We’ve been told to go on protein diets , fat free, no carb diets and all kinds of other fads. Millions have been made selling all kinds of diet books, many of which  are non-sustainable diets (you can’t live on them for the rest of your life) or even unhealthy diets to the point where they actually do us more harm than good.

So, before you pick a diet or start eliminating some entire food group from your food, we need to understand carbs and the glycemic index and we need it simple. So here goes … First of all, Carbohydrates is a word that describes the largest food group we have and includes most fruits, vegetables and starches. In other words, it’s way more than just bread, rice and potatoes. Most of us have heard the phrase; “take the white out of your diet” and you’ll eliminate carbs. Not so! More importantly, you should not be trying to entirely eliminate carbohydrates from your diet. Many carbs are good for us and required to maintain health.

Carbs are the fuel of our body. With out them, you would probably die or at the very least become very sick. Every food in the carbohydrate family is converted by the body into sugar. The body distributes glucose in the blood to every cell. ALL your cells use glucose as the fuel in the basic metabolic process. It’s like gas in a car. No gas, no go! Carbohydrates are the same for our bodies. No carbs, NO GO!

You can always leave a car sitting in your yard for a few months and then pour some gas into it. It will probably run. Try parking your body in your house on a diet with no carbohydrates for a few months and you’ll be making your family search for a permanent place to store your body.

So what makes a carbohydrate good or bad? Why are some called simple carbs and others complex? Which are good for us and how do we tell the difference?

In simple and short terms, it the glycemic index of the carbohydrate. Lower is better! Stay away from anything with a glycemic index of 56 or more! (even this number is controversial. Many newer studies say that low glycemic foods should be no higher than 45) Check here for misconceptions of the GI Index.

We’ve only had the glycemic index around for 15 years or so. It finally explains how carbohydrates are processed in our bodies and helps us class carbs so we know which ones we should be eating and those we should stay away from completely.

The glycemic index basically measure how fast a carbohydrate food is processed by our bodies. The higher the number, the faster we process it into glucose and the more of it we dump into our systems in a shorter time. This drives up our blood sugar levels. (diabetes can result) It plays havoc with out pancreas, liver and kidneys and worse of all, when our bodies get too much, too fast, we convert it and store it in our bodies as… you guessed it – Fat!

If that’s not bad enough, the faster we process a carbohydrate (high glycemic index) the sooner we crave more carbs. So, eat some cookies  – I guarantee you’ll be hitting that cookie jar within an hour for more. (Yes, most cookies have a HIGH glycemic index)

So if we think about low glycemic index carbohydrates, we can see that they will be broken down slower by our body into glucose (fuel) which means they will not spike our glucose blood levels as high AND they will fuel our bodies over a longer period of time. This results in us not getting get hungry as fast or eat more often than we should. It also means we don’t strain our pancreas, liver, kidneys and other body systems. Low glycemic carbohydrates are good for us and necessary to be healthy.

You can pick low glycemic food easily. It’s really common sense once you think about what’s in a food. For example, if it has white processed flour in it or sugar, it will always be a HIGH glycemic food and you need to stay away from it. Low glycemic foods are:

• Breakfast cereals based on oats, barley and bran (wholegrain)
• Breads with whole-grains, stone-ground flour, sour dough
• Reduce the amount of potatoes you eat (baked potatoes with nothing on them have a GI of 85)
• Eat all other types of fruit and vegetables
• Use Basmati or Doongara rice
• Eat wholegrain pasta, noodles, quinoa
• Eat plenty of salad vegetables with a vinaigrette dressing

Author
Ron Merk

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