Include good carbohydrates in your daily diet. Learn how to adjust your diet to fit your specific health and nutrition needs in this free video on grocery shopping.
Check food labels
Eat oatmeal and whole wheat breads
Eat whole grains
Watch out for misleading labels
Mary Hondros graduated from University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics. She currently works as a nutritionist for New Hanover County Schools in North Carolina. Her main focus is to teach children to improve nutritional habits.
MARY HONDROS: I am going to talk a little bit about good carbohydrates. The world would have you believe that there is such thing as good carbohydrate and a bad carbohydrate but in truth this just is not the way things work. The truth is that there are carbohydrates that are better choices than others but there is no such as a bad carbohydrate technically. What happens when they process things like grains that go into making carbohydrate foods like breads and pastas is that the outer layer of the grain called the bran is removed which essentially just leaves you with the inner grain which is just a white processed form and so then when they use this to make things like bread and pasta you get basically a very simple carbohydrate which when your body absorbs it, it makes your blood glucose level shoots straight up so without that outer bran to kind of help the digestion of that food and slow it down you get really high blood glucose levels from eating a simple carbohydrate, So, good carbohydrates or better carbohydrates would be things that are made from whole grains and things that are unprocessed so they still have that outer bran layer on them. So a trick to knowing if your food is actually a whole grain food is you need to check the food label, if the first ingredient says something like whole wheat flour or whole oats then you have yourself a whole grain product. Beware of logos that say made with whole grains because this does not necessarily mean that you are getting a serving of a whole grain food. So some tips to keep in mind if you are trying to eat grains whole, check your food label, those are the best hint to telling what is actually in your product and remember to look for that term whole wheat flour or whole oat. Choose things like oatmeal, whole wheat breads, whole wheat pastas and whole--and brown rice because these are all whole grain products and they still got that outer layer of bran on them and so when your body digests them it makes the higher fiber keeps your blood glucose levels from shooting up. Thirdly, try to make half the grain you eat whole so if for example you prefer to eat white rice try switching to whole wheat bread or something like that. And lastly, just remember to watch out for that misleading logo that tells you--that says you know made with whole grain products does not necessarily mean that it is a whole grain product. So those are some tips on your good carbohydrates.
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