Low GL Breakfast

Mick’s Breakfast.

Mick has:

1. Freshly squeezed orange juice.
2. GoodCarb Granola with a small banana, apple puree and soya milk
3. 2 small pieces of rye bread toast with olive oil based spread and home made apricot jam or acacia honey
4. 2 cups of real coffee

I try to keep the glycaemic load of breakfast as low as possible so as to stop mid morning snack cravings. The Granola has its glycaemic load measured and is very low (5g per serving). I think it’s important to use breakfast to get the benefits of fresh fruit. Bananas have a relatively high glycaemic load which is why we only ever buy small varieties (they taste better anyway). Eat them on the under ripe side for lowest glycaemic effect. Apples, on the other hand, have a very low glycaemic load. My wife Lizi makes the apple puree from Bramley apples, cores, skin and all, cut into 1” pieces and pureed over a very low heat with a little water – no added sugar. Cool, and keep in the fridge. You can put the apple in the blender for a smoother version if you like. I’ve recently been diagnosed as slightly intolerant to dairy products, which is why I’m using soya milk at the moment, but the cereal is fine with either milk or yoghurt. The olive oil spread, on the other hand is used from choice. It’s a great alternative to butter, tastes great and is very low in saturated fat.

My breakfast is, rather more glycaemic than it could be, especially since I put Demerara sugar in my coffee! But I try to keep the glycaemic load down by going for rye bread and using homemade jam made with fructose rather than sucrose or acacia honey which is also high in fructose. (Fructose has a very much lower glycaemic impact than normal sugar). I make my own rye bread in a breadmaker using 50% stoneground rye flour, 25% stoneground spelt flour and 25% white bread flour.

This is a pretty healthy breakfast, plenty of vitamins and fibre from the fresh fruit and rye bread, essential fatty acids from the nuts and seed, isoflavones from the soya and soluble fibre from the oats. Out of 10 I’d give it a 7 or 8.

This is my regular breakfast which I eat 6 days a week. But on the seventh day…I have bacon, egg, mushroom and tomatoes! And very nice it is too!

A really bad breakfast would be one with a very high glycaemic load which would not only put a strain on the body’s insulin system but also result in severe hunger pangs in a couple of hours time. Many nutritionists believe that the overeating which is prompted by blood sugar swings is a major cause of our obesity epidemic. Cornflakes, and similar highly processed cereals made from maize, wheat or rice have a very high glycaemic load. In fact, the glycaemic load of a serving of cornflakes is higher than an equal weight of sugar!

So a really bad breakfast would be:

• Bowl of cornflakes with skimmed milk
• White bread toast, low fat spread, and low fruit jam (such jam is higher in sugar)
• Tea with sugar (or if you want to make it really bad – a high energy glucose drink)

Such a breakfast is almost all carbohydrate and the absence of fat makes the glycaemic effect even greater. Absence of essential fatty acids should also be of concern, particularly to parents, since they are vital to brain development.

Top tips for a great breakfast: 1. Always include some fresh fruit. 2. Don’t rush - give yourself plenty of time and sit down. Speed eating increases the glycaemic effect, so take your time. 3. Enjoy it! Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day because it determines how your body behaves for the rest of the day. Our bodies have a finely tuned hormone system designed to keep our blood sugar level stable. Overnight our blood sugar settles down to a really placid resting level. The really bad breakfast is like throwing a large brick into a small pond and the ripples go on affecting us for the rest of the day. We need to be a bit kinder to our bodies and start the day right.