“Everything you need to know about what makes up a balanced meal, including fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Learn tricks for controlling portion sizes while maintaining satisfaction.”
Starchy foods is also called complex carbohydrate or polysaccharide.
Single unit sugar is called glucose.
Monosaccharides are glucose, fructose and galactose.
Regular table sugar is sucrose.
Moderation is the key for sugar consumption.
Lactose, a sugar found in milk, is a combination of glucose and galactose.
Lactose intolerant people tend to feel bloated and uncomfortable if they drink regular milk that is quite high in lactose because their intestines cannot absorb it.
Sucrose and lactose are examples of disaccharides.
Dietary fiber – soluble and insoluble, is also a complex carbohydrate.
Fibers are mainly found in fruits and veggies.
Fibers are believed to support the health of intestinal walls, regulate cholesterol levels, and a stool softener.
Dietary fat is really important for the healthy growth and development of our children especially the brain and nervous system development.
They also serve as cushion to vital internal organs.
Food that have a certain amount of fats in them will slow the speed at which glucose is released into the blood.
Dietary fats can be divided into two major categories – saturated and unsaturated fats.
Saturated fats is made up of fatty acid that are very straight and flat so they pack together quite densely, hence usually found being solid at room temperature.
An example of saturated fat: butter.
Unsaturated fats can be divided into two types: natural type or man-made.
Naturally occurring unsaturated fats are found in oils like olive oil or nut oil.
Man-made unsaturated fats are in things like margarine or reused oil in French fry machine
Avocado is high in naturally unsaturated fat and nuts.
When we chemically alter the fatty acids in unsaturated fats, you end up getting something called the trans fat.
Trans fat increase the amount of bad cholesterol (LDL cholesterol) and reduce the good cholesterol in our bodies.
Has many names like corn syrup, glucose, dextrose brown rice syrup, evaporated cane juice etc.
High consumption of sugar will increase the risk of developing Type II diabetes.
Scientists are starting to think that the large amount of sugar in the average American diet is one of the main reasons why obesity and diabetes rate are sky high.
Plain water is the best way to quench thirst and keep the body hydrated.
Sweetened drinks like sodas and energy drinks or even fruit juices are very high in sugar.
If we teach our children to see sweetened drinks as an occasional treat instead of the norm, it can really help to keep their sugar intake in check.
To illustrate glycemic index, compare these two snacks: a candy bar and a bowl of brown rice with some stir-fried broccoli.
Candy bar is high in simple sugars like sucrose and glucose.
Your body can quickly break down and absorb.
After you eat your candy bar, your blood sugar is going to start to climb pretty quickly.
That means the food that you just had has a relatively high glycemic index.
When blood sugar goes up like this, body senses it and starts to release a proportional amount of hormone called insulin that works to lower blood sugar and bring it back down to its normal level.
There will be a time lag when blood sugar shot up that result in increase of insulin level, this time lag will make you feel hungry.
For the brown rice and broccoli, your body has to work harder to break down the carbohydrates.
This cause the blood sugar to go up more slowly than the candy bar and result in a more stable blood sugar over a longer period of time.
Take home message is to choose food with a low glycemic index whenever possible.
The ability to moderate when we eat and when we cook is the most important and all too often the missing link in our diets.
In the US, we have supersized everything and we tend to value quantity over quality in the things that we eat.
No medical person in their right mind would argue that the average American’s sugar consumption is healthy.
We live in an all or nothing kind of culture.
As long as the choices we make most of the time are healthy ones, then there’s room for everything in our diet.
Homemade baked goods are certainly healthier because you are using real ingredients in amounts that you can control and without any preservatives or additives.
