The modern health industry and big business do a lot of advertising, advising and talking about how good for you whole grains are. And now everyone seems to have fallen for the whole-grain lie. Even the smart people at Harvard.

What they should be warning you about are the whole grains.

The whole idea behind eating a grain “whole” is this: Your body breaks down dietary starch – carbohydrates – into glucose, spiking your blood sugar. If a grain is left whole, you won’t break it down as fast, and it won’t raise your blood sugar. It sounds like a nice theory, but it doesn’t work in the real world.

Pure glucose has a glycemic index rating of 100.

The glycemic index measures how quickly food breaks down into glucose in your bloodstream. And the higher a food’s rating is on the glycemic index, the more it raises your blood-sugar level.

Here are the glycemic index ratings for one serving of some common whole-grain breads:

Whole grain bread (generic) – 51
Whole barley kernel bread – 55
Cracked wheat kernel bread – 58
Whole rye kernel bread – 66
Oat bran bread – 68

Here are the glycemic index ratings for a serving of some common snacks:

Potato chips – 54
Snickers candy bar – 55
Coca Cola – 55
Ice cream – 61
Corn chips – 63

I’m not showing you this to advise you to replace your whole grains with junk food.

I’m saying whole grains ARE junk food … at least when it comes to the glycemic index.

Even table sugar is only 61 on the glycemic index.

The bottom line here is that big business wants you to keep eating grains. They’re cheap to produce and companies make a fortune selling grain for all those rolls, boxes of cereal and loaves of bread. None of them are natural in that you could not have eaten these processed foods in your native environment. And none of them are “healthy.”

Real health foods are the ones you were designed to eat in your native environment: meat from animals and fish, and every kind of fruit, vegetable and nut.

If it comes packaged in a cardboard box, plastic bag, foil wrapper or Styrofoam container, be careful of what’s in there.

Here are five tips for shopping at the grocery store, so you can stay away from fake “health” food like whole grains:

1. It’s a good idea to stick to the outermost aisles of the grocery store, and don’t eat the processed stuff they sell in the middle aisles. These are loaded with carbs, artificial sweeteners and preservatives.

2. Choose good quality protein – it’s “guilt-free” food. It won’t raise your blood sugar. Grass-fed beef, free-range poultry, cage-free eggs, and wild salmon are all good choices. And except for cashews, which have a 22 on the glycemic index, all nuts have a glycemic index of zero.

3. Choose vegetables low on the glycemic index. Those that grow above ground are good choices – cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, mushrooms, green beans, leafy green vegetables and tomatoes. Potatoes, which grow below ground, are 104 on the glycemic index.

4. Eat fruits such as berries and those you can eat with the skin on. Cherries, plums, peaches, strawberries and grapes, for example. Also, skip dried fruit and fruit juices (they have added sugar).

To Your Good Health,

Al Sears, MD

RICO’S COMMENTS:

That’s funny. That is basically my diet at the end! Except I don’t eat much fruit at all as it does have a lot of sugar even if it’s natural……I sometimes snack on fruits like the very high antioxidant filled blueberry. If you know anything about food combining you should only eat fruit BY ITSELF. We will discuss that in detail in a future blog. Remember GRAINS are an invention! Anything that jacks up your blood sugar is creating havoc in your body. The Paleolithic diet was meat, fish, nuts, seeds, fruit and vegetables….no MILK and NO GRAINS. When I eliminated grains last year from my diet I got very lean, vascular and energized. I can eat tons of organic vegetables as they don’t have many calories but are packed with nutritional phytonutrients. I eat 5 meals a day and I’m never hungry! Your diet, coupled with exercise will determine if you live a long, healthy life or acquire chronic disease such as cardiovascular or cancer. The CHOICE is yours people. Choose wisely.

Rico Connor

Total Health For Life, LLC

This table includes the glycemic index and glycemic load of more than 2,480 individual food items. Not all of them, however, are available in the United States. They represent a true international effort of testing around the world.

The glycemic index (GI) is a numerical system of measuring how much of a rise in circulating blood sugar a carbohydrate triggers–the higher the number, the greater the blood sugar response. So a low GI food will cause a small rise, while a high GI food will trigger a dramatic spike. A list of carbohydrates with their glycemic values is shown below. A GI is 70 or more is high, a GI of 56 to 69 inclusive is medium, and a GI of 55 or less is low.

The glycemic load (GL) is a relatively new way to assess the impact of carbohydrate consumption that takes the glycemic index into account, but gives a fuller picture than does glycemic index alone. A GI value tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate turns into sugar. It doesn’t tell you how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food. You need to know both things to understand a food’s effect on blood sugar. That is where glycemic load comes in. The carbohydrate in watermelon, for example, has a high GI. But there isn’t a lot of it, so watermelon’s glycemic load is relatively low. A GL of 20 or more is high, a GL of 11 to 19 inclusive is medium, and a GL of 10 or less is low.

Foods that have a low GL almost always have a low GI. Foods with an intermediate or high GL range from very low to very high GI.

Both GI and GL are listed here. The GI is of foods based on the glucose index–where glucose is set to equal 100. The other is the glycemic load, which is the glycemic index divided by 100 multiplied by its available carbohydrate content (i.e. carbohydrates minus fiber) in grams. (The “Serve size (g)” column is the serving size in grams for calculating the glycemic load; for simplicity of presentation I have left out an intermediate column that shows the available carbohydrates in the stated serving sizes.) Take, watermelon as an example of calculating glycemic load. Its glycemic index is pretty high, about 72. According to the calculations by the people at the University of Sydney’s Human Nutrition Unit, in a serving of 120 grams it has 6 grams of available carbohydrate per serving, so its glycemic load is pretty low, 72/100*6=4.32, rounded to 4.

High GI foods have a glycemic index of more than 70. Low GI foods have a glycemic index of less than 55. Medium GI foods are in between.

The glycemic index measures how fast a food is likely to raise your blood sugar. This can be helpful. For example, if your blood sugar is low and continuing to drop during exercise, you would prefer to eat a carb that will raise your blood sugar quickly. On the other hand, if you would like to keep your blood sugar from dropping during a few hours of mild activity, you may prefer to eat a carb that has a lower glycemic index and longer action time. If your blood sugar tends to spike after breakfast, you may want to select a cereal that has a lower glycemic index.

www.diabetesnet.com

http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm CLICK HERE FOR THE CHART