What to eat for healthy blood sugar

What to eat for healthy blood sugar

A diet loaded with foods that cause your blood sugar to spike and then crash can lead to health troubles such as heart disease, certain cancers and even memory loss. Here are seven ways to keep your blood sugar steady

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1. Choose low-glycemic load carbs

It’s the quantity of carbohydrate in foods (and, of course, how much of the food you eat) that primarily affects blood sugar, but the type of carbohydrate also has an effect. To figure out which carbs are best and worst 
for blood sugar, Canadian scientist David Jenkins and his colleagues came up with the glycemic index(GI) (glyc means “sugar”). This index measures a food’s effect on blood sugar and ranks it from 0 to 100, but it used a standard amount (50 g) of carbohydrate for each food. Scientists then refined that concept with the idea of the glycemic load (GL), which takes into account how much carbohydrate a serving of food contains. 
For example, one bagel and five cups of 
watermelon both have 55 grams of carbo-hydrates. By choosing slow-acting (low-GL) carbs, such as low-fat dairy, beans and grapes instead of fast-acting (higher-GL) carbs, such as french fries, spaghetti and pop, you can help keep your blood glucose low and steady. Of course, still keep an eye on portions—no matter what kind of carbs you choose.