health

from the heart doc

The Best Sugars for Your Heart the concept. As an artificial

Choose low glycaemic index foods to stay healthy
In the quest for a healthier
diet, avoiding excess sugar
is an important prescrip-
tion. This is especially true
for Indians, where the risk of
Dr Vikas
Saini is a clinical diabetes and heart disease is
cardiologist and high. Many extend the worry
researcher at about sugar to all carbohy-
Harvard Medical
School and Harvard drates. How do we make
School of Public sense of this issue?
Health. He is
The concepts of glycaemic
president of the
Lown Cardiovascular index and load can help you
Research Foundation understand and make health-
in Boston. Write to
him at vikas.s@
ier food choices.
preventionindia.com The glycaemic index (GI)
was developed by Dr David
Jenkins at the University
of Toronto. This is a tool
most fruits and
the biggest sources vegetables are
construct, GI cannot account
for substantial variance in
different people. Also, inter-
action with other foods can
designed to compare blood alter absorption. Fat in a meal
glucose response to different or fibre from a leafy salad will
types of meals. Carbohydrates slow absorption and reduce
which break down quickly the glycaemic response.
into sugars and go into the Moreover, if you overeat, the
bloodstream quickly have a value of a low GI is negated.
high GI. Usually glucose is the Thus an equally important
reference with a GI of 100. For concept is glycaemic load.
any food, the average GI value This is the relationship of the
is calculated from blood tests amount of the absorbable
in 10 human subjects. Both sugar in the food as well as
the reference and test food its index. Thus a low-GI food
must contain an equal amount with a lot of carbohydrates
of available carbohydrate. can have the same glycaemic
Over the years this has load as a high-GI food with
become a popular way of fewer total carbs.
defining a healthy food. For Several studies have shown
instance, a highly sweet bev- that a low glycaemic diet
erage will have a high GI, maintained for many years
since the dissolved sugar will reduces risk of diabetes and
be absorbed into the blood- coronary disease. Work on
A low-GI diet
reduces risk of
diabetes and
coronary disease
usually involve glucose and
insulin. A big part of ageing
may thus be due to the
extra oxidative stress from
processing glucose. However,
not all the health effects of a
sugar load may be due to the Universal
sugar; some data implicates trump card
the spike in insulin levels against
chronic
itself as the culprit.
Finally, the almost univer- illness:
sal trump card against chronic exercise.
illness, exercise, rapidly It rapidly
draws sugar from the blood- draws sugar
stream and reduces the insulin from the
response. I tell my patients that bloodstream
they can indulge in sweets just and reduces

top : Photodisc
of trans fats are low-GI foods
packaged foods and
stream rapidly. the biology of ageing has before or just after exercise, the insulin
street foods
In my opinion, the exces- found that longevity genes when a high-GI food magically response
sively sweet tea served by so and pathways in all species becomes innocuous!
many Indians to their guests
top : Brand X Pictures
is not doing them a favour!
Most fruits and vegetables, Vote for ‘Resistant Starches’
grainy breads, pasta, pulses,
milk, fish, eggs, meat, nuts, An interesting new concept: ‘Resistant Starches’ which may
have some overlap with ‘fermentable fibre’ or soluble fibre.
cooking oil, and brown rice
These act in the large intestine where they are broken down
are low-GI foods (<55). Eating
into short-chain fatty acids. They have healthy effects such
whole fruits with all their fibre as decrease in appetite at later meals, improved insulin sen-
is healthier than drinking their sitivity, a preferential burning of fat, lower cholesterol, and
juices, which have a higher GI improved absorption of calcium and magnesium. Beans,
due to rapid absorption. brown rice and semi-ripe bananas are good sources.
There are limitations to

november 2009 november 2009 prevention ■ 000