One of the first things you'll discover if you're a newly diagnosed diabetic is the importance of maintaining a balanced blood glucose level. Depending on what type of diabetes you have and its severity, your doctor will prescribe a regimen of diet, exercise and possibly medications for you. The diet portion focuses on managing your blood glucose by avoiding foods that make your glucose levels spike, causing serious side effects like nausea, vomiting and vertigo. One of the easiest ways to do this is by learning how to eat using the glycemic index of carbohydrates.
Low Breakfast GI Carbs
All carbohydrates are rated according to how quickly they cause your blood glucose to spike above the normal level of 70 to 110 mg/dl. The glycemic index (GI) rates foods as low (0 to 54), medium (55 to 70) and high (over 70). While it's acceptable to eat carbs from all three groups, the goal is to select low or medium GI carbs to help offset the impact on blood glucose after eating high GI carbs. For instance, acceptable low GI breakfast carbs (with their GI rating in parenthesis) include very few traditional breakfast cereals with the exception of oatmeal (48). However, you can eat cereals with medium GI ratings if you balance them with apples (38), cherries (22), oranges (43) or prunes (15).
Unlike cholesterol or glucose levels, there's no normal GI level as long as your food choices end with the optimal result, which is to keep your blood glucose levels within normal. But, if there's any doubt about which foods to eat, go with the lower GI foods instead of the high, or balance your carbs with fat and protein foods.
Low Lunch GI Carbs
Many lunch staples include breads and baked goods that are traditionally medium to high GI carbs. However, there are some bread choices that are better than others. For instance, pumpernickel bread (49) and rye bread (64) are best if eaten with chicken, tuna and turkey and balanced with low GI lunch choices like apples (38), cherries (22), plums (39), tomato soup (38), skim milk (31) or plain yogurt (14).
Low Dinner GI Carbs
Dinner is one of the easier meals to plan because it often contains portions of protein and fat, which help to offset the GI of other servings. Even so, there are a number of relatively low GI dinner selections you can choose, like fettuccine (32), boiled spaghetti (33), black beans (30), boiled garbanzo beans (34), red lentils (27) and navy beans (38). Unlike the number of calories contained in a specific serving size, the glycemic index depends more on the quality of the carbohydrate rather than the quantity.
Member Comments