[Sca-cooks] diabetes and beets?

[Bill Fisher]

That is assuming you eat them with a good amount of protein, by them
selves with some  other non-starchy vegetable besides them.  Fats 
and acids help as well.

Anything "starchy" is not on low glycemic index diet, especially if they
are prepared with any other refined starches such as cornstarch and 
arrow root.  Starchy puts it right off any managed diabetic diet, or they
are eaten with extreme care and moderation as portion size is critical.

Beets by themselves have a glycemic load of about 5,  which is based 
on a scale of 1 - 20.  5 is not bad., pretty good actually.  This is for 
half a cup of beets though.

Glycemic load is how you figure out the impact of a serving of a food on 
your blood sugar, you take the glycemic index (usually the white bread
index that is more commonly used than the white sugar index) and multiply
it by the carb value of a serving.

If you look at the USDA Standard Reference Library:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

A cup of cooked beets is about 16 grams of carbs per cup 
about 3 grams of that is fiber the rest is sugar.

the same amount of raw beets has only 13 grams of carbs per
cup but the same  amount of fiber.

generic GI for beets is 64% x 16 =  a glycemic load of 10 for cooked beets.
as opposed to 64% X 13 =  8.32 for raw beets.

For glycemics, anything starchy, eaten very sparingly, is fine.  About 
a half cup with a good sized serving of protein, some acids, maybe some
good fats to slow the absorbtion and lower the gl.

Cornstarch as a GI of 88 and a rough tablespoon has  12 grams of pure
carb in it, with
no fiber.   Glycemic Load of that is 10.56, which is ok for occasional eating.

Other easy rules of thumb are:

raw is better than cooked - starchy foods have grains in them that
swell and burst
when cooked - this is why they get soft.  Burst starch grains are
easier and quicker
to digest than un-swollen ones, leading to a faster insulin response
and then higher
retained blood sugar levels.

Fiber is good - fiber slows down carb absorbtion.

Acid is good - acids like vinegar slow down the passage of food from the stomach
to the small intestine, which slows down carb absorbtion (pickled beets rock!)

Good fats are good- fats slow down carb absorbtion as well as their own health
benefits.

and Protein eaten with starchy foods slows down carb absorbtion.    So if you 
were to eat your beets, raw, in a salad, with vinegar and olive oil,
with some nice,
lean meat, you would be better off than eating just the beets or cooked beets.

Exercise also keeps blood sugar down :-p

I am not diabetic myself, but I eat like I am to keep myself from
winding up that
way.  I help my Mom, Dad and older sisters keep their type 2 diabetes in check.
My grandfather died of complications from type 2 diabetes.



Cadoc




On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:25:47 -0400, Avraham haRofeh
<avrahamharofeh at herald.sca.org> wrote:
> >> Not to mention they are very bad for you in terms of blood insulin
> > response.  Anyone
> >> who is remotely diabetic should stay clear of any beet root. < Cadoc
> >>
> >
> > Oh, REALLY?  I have not heard of any such precaution  -- and I eat beets
> > fairly regularly  {once a week}  could you please give me more details?
> 
> I'm afraid Cadoc is mistaken. Beets have a moderate glycemic index (64, on a
> scale where pure glucose is 100) - lower than potato (85) or carrot (71). In
> moderation, counted as a "starchy vegetable" exchange, beets are perfectly
> fine for diabetics.
> 
> ****************
> Reb Avraham haRofeh
>      (mka Randy Goldberg MD)
> Quarterly azure and argent, four mascles counterchanged
> Random Tag: C code. C code run. Run code, run. PLEASE!
> 
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