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Healthy Recipes
Healthy Recipes Articles
Healthy Recipes
By Brian Gokey, CFT, BSMET
This section of www.wellness4everyone.com is dedicated to providing you with healthy recipes for you
and your families. We strive to have recipes that are alkaline based in most cases to help you rid your body of acid waste. At the
same time, we have recipes that adhere to the glycemic index, meaning recipes that have low glycemic effects on the body. We are convinced
here at wellness4everyone.com that we can have great tasting and healthy meals using a mostly alkaline diet and also paying close
attention to the glycemic index. What we want to do in this section is define properly acid - alkaline foods and the glycemic index,
as you may not have heard of them before.
Acid – Alkaline Foods List
As a general rule of thumb, meats and dairy products are
acid forming foods, and fresh fruits and vegetables are alkaline producing in the body. What does it mean to be acid or alkaline producing
in the body? Good question. Basically when a food or liquid is ingested, it is broken down through chemical process in our body and
when the food is digested, the makeup of the nutrients left are either more acid producing or alkaline producing in the body. We are
interested in removing acid waste in the body, so we are generally interested in eating foods that are rich with alkaline nutrients.
How this is measured in a lab is called titration. The first step is to burn the food to be measured into ashes. Then, a standard
amount of pure water is added to make a solution. This solution is then tested to see what the ph is to determine if it is alkaline
or acid. After we know whether it is acid or alkaline, the solution is measured to determine the strength or concentration of the
acid or alkaline.
Glycemic index Food Listing
The Glycemic index or GI is a measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood glucose levels. Carbohydrates
that break down rapidly during digestion releasing glucose rapidly into the bloodstream have a high GI; carbohydrates that break down
slowly, releasing glucose gradually into the bloodstream, have a low GI. For most people, foods with a low GI have significant health
benefits. The concept was developed by Dr. David J. Jenkins and colleagues in 1980–1981 at the
Low Glycemic Score – Good
A lower glycemic index suggests slower rates
of digestion and absorption of the sugars and starches in the foods and may also indicate greater extraction from the liver and periphery
of the products of carbohydrate digestion. A lower glycemic response is often thought to equate to a lower insulin demand, better
long-term blood glucose control and a reduction in blood lipids. The insulin index may therefore also be useful as it provides a direct
measure of the insulin response to a food.
What is the Glycemic Index?
The current validated methods use glucose as the reference
food, giving it a glycemic index value of 100 by definition. This has the advantages in that it is universal and it results in maximum
GI values of approximately 100. White bread can also be used as a reference food, giving a different set of GI values (if white bread
= 100, then glucose ˜ 140). For people whose staple carbohydrate source is white bread, this has the advantage of conveying directly
whether replacement of the dietary staple with a different food would result in faster or slower blood glucose response. The disadvantages
with this system are that the reference food is not well defined, and the GI scale is culture dependent.
Benefits of Low GI Foods
A
low GI food will release glucose more slowly and steadily. A high GI food causes a more rapid rise in blood glucose levels and is
suitable for energy recovery after endurance exercise or for a person with diabetes experiencing hypoglycemia.
Many modern diets
rely on the Glycemic Index, including the South Beach Diet, and NutriSystem Nourish Diet.
Looking for Healthy Recipes?
You can
find many Healthy Recipes in the Healthy Cooking articles section of www.wellness4everyone.com.
