My wonderful S is Hypoglycaemic which means he uses up sugar too fast and just recently has had some days when his sugar levels have been up and down despite there being no real change in his diet. Anyway after some investigation into possible causes we have found that the best way to ensure that his diet is supplying him with the sugar he needs at the speed he needs is to follow a low to medium GI diet as food with a low to medium GI value are low carb and therefore release sugars into the body at a slower more sustained rate....
OK I think, lets find a listing of GI values for food - we all need to follow this plan, because...well just because...we're a family, that's what families do, and I don't particularly care whether my wonderful S is over there and we are over here - we are all doing it! And besides, it's healthy - isn't it?
That's the big question - how healthy is it in reality? Apparently we should all eat a low to medium GI diet. You can use a low to medium GI diet to lose weight - but guess what? not all the low to medium GI foods are necessarily healthy. Some of them are packed with saturated fats which are not good for you. Some of them are packed with more additives than you can shake a stick at, so that's no good either. Some of them have a veritable Molotov cocktail of nasty things in them that we definitely wouldn't want the children or ourselves to eat! This coupled wit the fact that lots of them are quite calorific was quite a shock....
I think my wonderful S summed it up quite nicely in an email he sent me last night, after I emailed him the GI listing I had found. He said:
Looking at it, I think he is probably right. We need to eat nothing but fruit and veg that we grow ourselves, and possibly small amounts of chicken and lots of rabbit, that way we can ensure that the food we are eating is additive free and that the nutritional value we get from it is good, as well as it releasing sugars at a speed that will suit hypoglycaemia quite well and hopefully stop my wonderful S from feeling so out of sorts and inevitably crashing with such resounding force that he ends up eating stuff he shouldn't just to get a sugar high that he then has to spend the rest of the day trying to adjust for so he doesn't just crash again....Need the corresponding list which highlights only fruits and veg as all other fun food although low in GI is terrible.
The whole thing has certainly opened my eyes - perhaps I was being a little naive in believing that low GI food is healthy food - it is simply, low carb and therefore slow at releasing sugar into the body....
I think I'm going to just make the whole family vegetarian, although I suspect they may well revolt against me as we all love meat so much....
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Hey Lou - good for you to do your research. I don't know much about the GI diet myself. But I sure do have my own opinions about food. I feel, in general, that Sir M and I eat healthfully. That's not to say that we don't get Chinese take away or eat cake sometimes, but all things in moderation. I don't think carbs are evil, but maybe they should just be limited? I know, for me, if I don't eat any carbs at breakfast (and a protein too) I'll chew my own arm off by 9AM. Sir M and I are mostly vegetarians as well. I try really hard not to cook meat at home, besides fish, but it doesn't stop me from eating meat out. So we aren't really hard-and-fast on our 'rules' for eating.
ReplyDeleteMaybe with the needs Wonderful S has, he should just plan on little snacks every couple of hours? Like nuts and cheese? That's what I do anyway, and it keeps me from crashing or being a crazy lady.
Hm... betcha this didn't help at all. But I wanted to throw my 2 cents into the pot. :)
Hey M - thank you for your thoughts and comments, they are very gratefully received. We have had a one or 2 chats about the whole eating little and often, and it is fair to say that having a morning, afternoon and evening snack is something we are aware we should be having, with the whole glycaemia thing, it just doesn't seem to have been working as effectively as it should, and even though we eat pretty healthily and are not a family of 'crap food' eaters hence the further investigation into slower release foods.
ReplyDeleteHey L! I wanted to respond back ot your comment about the BIG TEST without going into a lot of detail on my page.... the test is required for me to be liscensed to sell securities. That means, basically, retirmentment products and mutual funds. I won't actually be doing any selling, but my boss would like me to have it so I can do trades and such. It's complicated, confusing and a pain in the butt.
ReplyDelete-Mysterious M