Thursday, October 20, 2011

Low GI Diet

It seems every time you turn around there is contradictory advice.  Low fat, no fat, local, macrobiotic, high protein, low GI.  Yikes!

Sunday on CBC Radio I listened to a convincing anti-carbs argument from the author of 'Why We Get Fat and What We Can Do About It"
Today, Mr. Taubes is the world's best known spokesman for the "low carbohydrate" approach to nutrition.He claims that our decades-long obsession with counting calories and banning fat from our diet is actually the PROBLEM, rather than the solution to the obesity epidemic. All this has left the professionals at war with one another. And us left in the middle with no idea whether skim milk is a health food or a deadly poison.  The Sunday Edition

By coincidence, at my annual physical earlier this week, my doctor advised me to go on a low GI Diet, and cut way back on my starches.  I actually got a bit pissed off -  I just figured out this Weightwatchers thing!  The doctor must have mistook the look on my face for confusion, because she expanded a bit to say, a "no carbs diet".  When I asked her a few questions, like 'what about oatmeal in the morning?' she said only in moderation.  

Truthfully I've felt a bit sorry for myself the last few days because so many of my favourite foods seem to be yet again on some forbidden list; and because it seems I'm going to have to learn a new system and I don't know whether I really feel like it after just being three months in to WW.

Well, doctors aren't nutritionists, that's for sure.  Turns out the low GI Diet actually encourages oatmeal.  Pasta, not so much.  Foods on the GI Index with ratings that don't surprise me are: 'High GI', such as white sugar, flour, bread, pasta (which I don't much indulge other than pasta).  On the 'high' list that do surprise me are pumpkin, dates and watermelon.

~sigh~

3 comments:

Giulia said...

That sound you hear from south in DC is me screaming. Carbs are not necessarily bad. But you knew that...

Diane said...

I don't know what to eat anymore.

Kurt said...

Word on the street is that the GI of foods is difficult to measure, as individual responses vary greatly.