It appears that you are currently using Ad Blocking software. What are the consequences? Click here to learn more.
Ever since I discovered the glycemic index a dozen years ago, I thought that I knew that anything we eat or drink has to have calories for it to raise our blood glucose levels. In fact, those calories have to come from carbohydrates – not protein or fat – to give those levels much of a spike.
Now, however, new studies have found a strange and disturbing exception to the rule.
All the real diet books say to start with a food diary. For the 85 percent of those of us with diabetes who are overweight or obese and are presumably trying to get down to something more healthy that sounds easy enough.
Non-caloric sweeteners like stevia and Splenda and others might be better for those of us with type 2 diabetes than old-fashioned table sugar and the more recent high-fructose corn syrup. We don’t need the extra calories that these sugars provide or their impact on our livers or the blood glucose spikes that they give us.
Most of us probably assume that if your only beverage choices were diet or regular soda, the diet variety would be better. After all, drinks made with non-nutritive sweeteners do give us fewer calories.
But recent studies indicate that drinking diet soda can lead to our gaining weight. They can raise the A1C levels of those of us who have diabetes. And drinking them is also associated with a greater risk of heart disease.
My article about Dreamfields Pasta here last month seemed to have something missing. I started to think about this one evening while enjoying a plate of their linguine.