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Good carbohydrates make you lose weight
How many times have you read the advice of nutrition experts committed to spreading the importance of reducing high-glycemic carbohydrates into your diet?
One of the first promoters was Michel Montignac, who has been publishing books on slimming diets for over 25 years and promotes the importance of not overly raising the blood sugar level after meals. In fact, most of the slimming diets are based on theoretical tables in which, for each type of food, the rate of conversion into glucose in the blood is shown, ie the glycemic index.
Carrots, for example, have, on average, a low glycemic index if raw (35) and high if cooked (85). But in reality there are many factors that affect the glycemic index of foods:
- Place of origin
- Degree of ripeness
- Variety
- Chemical processes suffered during the supply chain
- Physical processes suffered during the supply chain
Many scientific studies and epidemiological analyzes confirm the correlation between high blood glucose peaks and inflammatory, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, tumors, obesity, etc. “Am J Clin Nutr. April 30, 2014, Zhonghua Nei Ke Za Zhi. January 2014 53 (1): 9-12, Nutr Res. 2013 Sep; 33 (9): 719-25. “But is it enough to know the theoretical glycemic index of a food to decide whether to avoid it?
How to lower the glycemic index of your diet
While recognizing the important contribution of such research in divulging the correlation between all the main degenerative pathologies and the continuous excessive raising of post-prandial glycemia, today we can certainly do better. To begin with, we can forget all the misleading tables and indicate with more precision and specificity the exact food and not the group of food belonging.
Let’s try to explain the concept with a practical example:
Non-wholemeal pasta, as well as bread and crackers, are erroneously referred to as high glycemic index foods. As a result, these carbohydrate-rich foods have been denigrated by most dietary theories. But pasta, bread, and crackers are wheat derivatives and not all varieties of this material are equal. As a result, durum wheat pasta cannot be classified as one family. The wheat variety “Creso” will have a very high glycemic index compared to the pasta obtained from ancient varieties certified as the “Senatore Cappelli”.
In light of this information, approximate indications can no longer be justified, referring simply to the food group compared to the glycemic index. In fact, as we can see in table 1.2 a pizza made with a non-integral (conventional) wheat commonly found at the supermarket or pizzeria, can raise blood sugar by + 120% within 2 hours of ingestion while, the same identical pizza using a wheat that is not integral but of ancient origin, therefore identical also as a group of belonging not only will not register an increase in blood sugar but after 2 hours it will even have favored a decrease of 63%. Does it seem incredible? Perhaps, but the choice of biocompatible raw materials and the proportions of nutrients should be a conceptual milestone for all figures involved in the food culture.
Can you lose weight on a carbohydrate-based diet?
Follow a normocaloric diet, taking the same amount of calories that you can consume daily and using carbohydrates that maintain constant blood sugar prevents many degenerative diseases and allows you to keep a lower percentage of fat. In fact, the increase in blood sugar is often a key factor in stimulating insulin production and promoting fattening.
For this reason, we wanted to show that Equilibrium foods (Pasta, Crackers and any food made with our flours) rich in carbohydrates, not only do not increase too much the glycemia but even have the ability to stabilize it in more physiological terms, keeping accelerated the metabolism.
