Diabetes and Glucose Intolerance is an international epidemic. Most MDs tell all their patients to focus on eating low carbohydrate foods with a low glycemic index or a low glycemic load, which is a better term. You may have read a previous post that discussed the need to limit total daily carbohydrate intake to less than 40-60 grams total per day; some surgeons I know would say we should limit total carbohydrate intake to 24-48 grams per day as the body’s insulin, even with low insulin levels can handle about 1-2 grams of carbohydrates per hour. Most patients will find limiting carbohydrates to such a significant extent to be almost impossible.


Thus we start in baby steps little by little, limiting total carbohydrate intake.


Note that it is the fluctuation of sugar that is generally the cause of the devastating consequences of diabetes, so the ultimate goal is to keep your body’s blood sugar level as low and stable as possible. 


The First Step is getting rid of gluten and all wheat products (in Spanish, “limitar todo arina, trigo”)


Second, we count how many carbohydrates are going into your mouth. Start limiting this as much as possible. It is better to stick with plenty of veggies and beans if needed but in some diabetic patients even too many beans can be of a concern so watch your daily sugars and HgA1C (test of how your blood sugar levels have been doing for the last 3 months).


Third pay attention to low Glycemic Index/low Glycemic Load foods: see below list. Try to eat only as low carbohydrate food as possible per serving: if you need a choice, always choose a low glycemic load food versus a high one but be ware that even low glycemic load/index foods can raise your blood sugar.


Fourth: you will have to make choices carefully in some cases. If you are going to eat a food with more carbohydrates or high GI/ GL, you need to exercise right after to avoid the sugar spike in your blood that leads to blindness and all the issues that diabetes, an epidemic, causes.


Here is more information that will help.


The glycemic index (GI) is a value assigned to foods based on how slowly or how quickly those foods cause increases in blood glucose levels. It is essential to know the GI of all the foods you put in your mouth if you are pre-diabetic or have diabetes. I ask all my patients for their Hemaglobin A1C (HgA1C)


Also known as “blood sugar,” blood glucose levels above normal are toxic, increase Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) levels in the body which cause new, abnormal blood vessels to grow which easily leak. This is what leads to blindness, kidney failure, stroke, heart attack or increase cardiovascular risk in patients with Diabetes. Most doctors agree that Diabetes has the risk of leading to a slow, painful death, which is painful for all involved and we want to prevent Diabetes at all cost. 


So read on to avoid Diabetes by eating a very low carbohydrate/low glycemic index foods.


Sandra Lora Cremers, MD, FAC


Below modified from: 
http://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods


http://www.montignac.com/en/search-for-a-specific-glycemic-index/


Foods low on the glycemic index (GI) scale tend to release glucose slowly and steadily. Foods high on the glycemic index release glucose rapidly. Low GI foods tend to foster weight loss, while foods high on the GI scale help with energy recovery after exercise, or to offset hypo- (or insufficient) glycemia. Long-distance runners would tend to favor foods high on the glycemic index, while people with pre- or full-blown diabetes would need to concentrate on low GI foods. Why? People with diabetes can’t produce sufficient quantities of insulin—which helps process blood sugar—which means they are likely to have an excess of blood glucose. The slow and steady release of glucose in low-glycemic foods is helpful in keeping blood glucose under control.


But the glycemic index tells only part of the story. What it doesn’t tell you is how high your blood sugar could go when you actually eat the food, which is partly determined by how much carbohydrate is in an individual serving. To understand a food’s complete effect on blood sugar, you need to know both how quickly the food makes glucose enter the bloodstream, and how much glucose it will deliver. A separate value called glycemic load does that. It gives a more accurate picture of a food’s real-life impact on blood sugar. The glycemic load is determined by multiplying the grams of a carbohydrate in a serving by the glycemic index, then dividing by 100. A glycemic load of 10 or below is considered low; 20 or above is considered high. Watermelon, for example, has a high glycemic index (80). But a serving of watermelon has so little carbohydrate (6 grams) that its glycemic load is only 5.

To help you understand how the foods you are eating might impact your blood glucose level, here is a listing of the glycemic index and glycemic load, per serving, for more than 100 common foods.

Glycemic Index for All Foods 2016


Read a good explanation by Dr. Davis below as well: http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2015/02/dietitians-folly-glycemic-index-gi/

The Dietitian’s Folly: Glycemic Index (GI)

By Dr. Davis | February 14, 2015

Here is an excerpt from Wheat Belly Total Health, chapter 7: Grainless Living Day-to-Day.

Glycemic index, or GI, describes how high blood sugar climbs over 90 minutes after consuming a food compared to glucose.

The GI of a chicken drumstick? Zero: No impact on blood sugar. How about three fried eggs? Zero, too. This is true for other meats, oils and fats, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, and non-starchy vegetables. You eat any of these foods and blood sugar doesn’t budge, no glycation phenomena follow, no glucotoxicity, no lipotoxicity.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept of GI nor of the related concept, glycemic load, GL, a measure that also factors in the quantity of food. The problem is how the values for GI and GL are interpreted. For instance, categories of GI are arbitrarily broken down into:

High glycemic index 70 or greater
Moderate glycemic index 56-69
Low glycemic index 55 or less

This is like being a little bit more or less pregnant. By this scheme, cornflakes, puffed rice, and pretzels have “high“ GIs above 70, while whole grain bread, oatmeal, and rice have “low” GIs. A typical non-diabetic person consuming a typical serving of cornflakes, e.g., 1 cup cereal in ½ cup milk, will thereby experience a blood sugar in the neighborhood of 180 mg/dl—very high and more than sufficient to set the process of glycation and glucotoxicity on fire, add to adrenal disruption, cataract formation, destruction of cartilage, hypertension, heart disease, and neurological deterioration or dementia. (Blood sugars will vary, depending on body weight, degree of overweight, insulin sensitivity, time of day, and other factors, but this would be typical. Someone with pre-diabetes or diabetes will have a higher blood sugar.)

How about a low-glycemic index food, such as a bowl of oatmeal, 1 cup cooked, in ½ cup milk? A typical response: blood sugar 170 mg/dl—lower, yes, but still quite awful, triggering all the same undesirable phenomena triggered by the high-glycemic cornflakes. This is why I believe “low” GI is more accurately labeled “less-high” GI, not “low.” Alternatively, we could just recognize that any GI above single digits should be regarded as high because it’s not until you get to single digits or zero that blood sugars no longer range into destructive levels.

The concept of “glycemic load” tries to take this into account by factoring in portion size. Thus the GL of cornflakes is 23, while the GL of oatmeal is 13 and that of whole wheat bread is 10. GL is usually interpreted as:

High glycemic load 20 or greater
Moderate glycemic load 11-19
Low glycemic load 10 or less

Once again, this lulls you into thinking that foods like oatmeal or whole wheat bread don’t raise blood sugar—but they do. They are not low glycemic load; they have less high glycemic loads.

The value that truly appears to count and predict whether or not we will have a blood sugar rise? Grams of carbohydrate. Specifically, “net” grams of carbohydrate calculated by subtracting fiber:

“Net” carbohydrates = total carbohydrates – fiber

Net carbohydrates is a concept popularized by the late Dr. Robert Atkins, who recognized that fiber has no impact on blood sugar despite being lumped together with other carbohydrates. (Fiber is technically a carbohydrate, or polysaccharide, but humans lack the enzymes to digest most fibers into sugars.) In other words, there is really no need for manipulations such as glycemic index or glycemic load.

If you were to test blood sugars with a common finger stick glucose meter (as many of us, diabetic and non-diabetic, often do to gauge the effect of different foods) 30-60 minutes after consuming a food, you would see that it takes most of us around 14-15 grams of “net” carbohydrates before we begin to see a rise above the starting value. We check blood sugars at 30-60 minutes after consuming a food. The peak can actually occur before or after 30-60 minutes, depending on the mix of protein, fat, fiber, the amount of water or other liquids, pH of the food, and other factors. This is just an approximation that allows you to perform a single finger stick, rather than every few minutes. What we don’t do is check blood sugar two hours after consumption, as advised by most physicians interested in blood sugar control on diabetes medications. This seems obvious, but is a common tripping point when discussed with doctors.

Ideally, little to no rise in blood sugar is allowed. In this way, you have turned off any excess levels of glycation and glucotoxicity, undo the effects of high insulin and insulin resistance, and allow fasting blood sugars to drift downward over time.

There is another common fiction—or perhaps half-truth might be a better term—prevailing in nutritional thinking offered by the dietary community that tells us that, if a high-glycemic index food is consumed along with proteins, fats, or fiber, i.e., foods with low- or zero- glycemic index, that the net glycemic effect will be much improved. For this reason, dietitians often advise people to consume, say, bread with peanut butter: the high blood sugar potential of the bread is blunted by the low-glycemic protein, fat, and fiber of the peanut butter. As often occurs in the flawed logic of nutrition, this is another example of something being less bad, not necessarily good. For instance, a typical blood sugar in a middle-aged mildly overweight male after consuming two slices of multigrain bread made with whole wheat flour, oats, and millet on an empty stomach might be 170 mg/dl—high enough to provoke insulin, cortisol, insulin resistance, visceral fat accumulation, inflammation, the phenomena of glycation and glucotoxicity, and add to dementia risk. In another session, again starting with an empty stomach, the same male consumes two slices of multigrain bread, but this time with several slices of turkey (mostly protein), mayonnaise (mostly fat), and lettuce (mostly fiber and water). Blood sugar: 160 mg/dl—better, yes, but still pretty awful and more than sufficient to generate all the phenomena generated at a blood sugar of 170 mg/dl, including brain atrophy.

Less bad is not necessarily good. Feel free to count your carbs, but ignore the misleading concepts of glycemic index and glycemic load. Use those tables of glycemic index you might have to line your box of cat litter, but don’t use them to construct a healthy diet.

Almond milk, Blue Diamond Unsweetened

0

Glycemic Index:

Serving size:                                               100 grams                                               1 ounce  (28g)                                              Custom Food  (240g)                                      

FOOD SUMMARY

Download Printable Label Image

Nutritional Target Map 

4.53.6Fullness FactorND Rating

NutritionData’s         
Opinion

Weight loss:
Optimum health:
Weight gain:

The good: This food is very low in Saturated Fat and Cholesterol. It is also a very good source of Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol) and Calcium.

The bad: This food is high in Sodium.

Caloric Ratio Pyramid 

15%	75%	10%
Carbs	Fats	Protein

0

NUTRIENT BALANCE

41

Completeness Score

PROTEIN QUALITY

NA

Amino Acid Score

This listing does not contain enough data on individual amino acids to determine protein quality.

NUTRITION INFORMATION

Amounts per Custom Food (240g)

Calorie Information Amounts Per Selected Serving %DV Calories 40.0 (167 kJ) 2%   From Carbohydrate 6.0 (25.1 kJ)     From Fat 30.0 (126 kJ)     From Protein 4.0 (16.7 kJ)     From Alcohol ~ (0.0 kJ)   Carbohydrates Amounts Per Selected Serving %DV Total Carbohydrate 2.0 g 1% Dietary Fiber 1.0 g 4% Starch ~     Sugars 0.0 g   Fats & Fatty Acids Amounts Per Selected Serving %DV Total Fat 3.0 g 5% Saturated Fat 0.0 g 0% Monounsaturated Fat ~     Polyunsaturated Fat ~     Total trans fatty acids 0.0 g   Total trans-monoenoic fatty acids ~     Total trans-polyenoic fatty acids ~     Total Omega-3 fatty acids ~     Total Omega-6 fatty acids ~     Learn more about these fatty acids and their equivalent names

Protein & Amino Acids Amounts Per Selected Serving %DV Protein 1.0 g 2% Vitamins Amounts Per Selected Serving %DV Vitamin A 500 IU 10% Vitamin C 0.0 mg 0% Vitamin D 100.0 IU 25% Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol) 10.0 mg 50% Vitamin K ~   ~ Thiamin ~   ~ Riboflavin ~   ~ Niacin ~   ~ Vitamin B6 ~   ~ Folate ~   ~ Vitamin B12 ~   ~ Pantothenic Acid ~   ~ Choline ~     Betaine ~     Minerals Amounts Per Selected Serving %DV Calcium 200 mg 20% Iron 0.4 mg 2% Magnesium 16.0 mg 4% Phosphorus 40.0 mg 4% Potassium ~   ~ Sodium 180 mg 8% Zinc ~   ~ Copper ~   ~ Manganese ~   ~ Selenium ~   ~ Fluoride ~     Sterols Amounts Per Selected Serving %DV Cholesterol 0.0 mg 0% Phytosterols ~     Other Amounts Per Selected Serving %DV Alcohol ~     Water ~     Ash ~     Caffeine ~     Theobromine ~

Footnotes for Almond milk, Blue Diamond Unsweetened

Source: Nutrient data for this listing was provided by Custom. Each “~” indicates a missing or incomplete value.

Percent Daily Values (%DV) are for adults or children aged 4 or older, and are based on a 2,000 calorie reference diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower based on your individual needs.

Nutrition Data’s Opinion, Completeness Score™, Fullness Factor™, Rating, Estimated Glycemic Load (eGL), and Better Choices Substitutions™ are editorial opinions of NutritionData.com, given without warranty, and are not intended to replace the advice of a nutritionist or health-care professional. Nutrition Data’s opinions and ratings are based on weighted averages of the nutrient densities of those nutrients for which the FDA has established Daily Values, and do not consider other nutrients that may be important to your health or take into account your individual needs. Consequently, Nutrition Data’s higher-rated foods may not necessarily be healthier for you than lower-rated ones. All foods, regardless of their rating, have the potential to play an important role in your diet.

Reference:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts-C00001-01c200_N0003s0e0U0300002u020100010A000K02000P0ozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz0404Almondqq0milkqqcqq0Blueqq0Diamondqq0Unsweetened.html

Glycemic Index for Sweeteners

Sweetener	Type	Glycemic Index
Miraculin	Natural Sweetener	0
Monellin	Natural Sweetener	0
Pentadin	Natural Sweetener	0
Stevia	Natural Sweetener	0

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