Think of some of your favourite recipes and the ingredients they contain. Chances are that with a few minor variations and new cooking techniques, they can be made healthier, more nutritious and still taste delicious.

Let’s begin:
1. Replace cooking oil with vegetable oil spray, broth, juice or water when sautéing.
2. Switch to healthier cooking fats, including olive and canola oils. Avoid tropical oils, butter, lard and shortenings.
3. Oven fry or pan-fry foods using a small amount of oil, instead of deep-frying.
4. Decrease salt by adding herbs, spices, or citrus to boost the flavour of your food. Buy low-sodium canned products.
5. Cook with reduced calorie products, such as fat-free or reduced-fat sour cream, cream cheese and other light dairy foods as well as low fat spreads and salad dressing. Also, try to replace the cream and cheese with natural yoghurt. And use mustard instead of spreads.
6. Go for white meat (chicken, turkey, rabbit, fish). If eating red meat, use lean cuts of meat, including beef and pork cuts labelled loin and round. Trim all visible fat and skin from meat and poultry before cooking. Rinse or drain ground meat after browning it to remove excess fat. Limit your red meat intake to 1 time per week.
7. Rely on dried beans, peas and lentils as healthy substitutes for meat when preparing casseroles, stews or soups.
8. Instead of white rice in stews and casseroles, use whole grains such as barley and brown rice for added fibre and nutrients.
9. Add extra vegetables – to your plate, on your pizza and in your soups, salads, sandwiches and omelettes.
10. Replace some of the sugar in your baking with applesauce or dried fruit.
11. Use egg substitute or egg whites for at least half of the eggs needed in your cooking (the yolk has all the fat and cholesterol)
12. Invest in a good quality set of non-stick skillets, baking pans and saucepans that don’t require greasing.

TIP: You can reduce the sugar and fat by ¼ to ½ in many recipes with little taste change in the finished product. Try a little reduction at first, and if you are satisfied, reduce a bit more next time.

ADVICE: Don’t be overwhelmed. Start by making just 1 or 2 changes at a time. Modifying recipes would soon become easy with some practice.

Reference: Body Bulletin Canada April 2008

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Claire Morawski is also the founder of mySKiN&CO – a beauty clinic in Malta. At mySKiN&CO’s blog , Claire shares a lot of information related to beauty – how to achieve a healthy younger looking skin, how to find a good therapist, simple tips of how to take care of your skin at home, why it is important to exfoliate between waxing session, and more. If you are interested, why not join mySKiN&CO community.

What is the Glycemic Index?
Including carbohydrates in our diet is essential. However, not all carbohydrate foods are created equal, and they actually behave quite differently in our bodies. The Glycemic Index (GI) describes this difference by ranking carbs according to their effect on our blood glucose levels. Hence, the GI is a value that is obtained by monitoring a person’s blood sugar after eating a particular food, and gives us an idea of which foods raise our blood glucose fastest and highest.

What do the numbers mean?
The Glycemic Index range is:
Low GI = 55 or less
Medium GI = 56 – 69
High GI = 70 or more

Eating pure glucose is given a ranking of 100 — all other foods are in relation to this. So a food with a glycemic index of 95 raises blood sugar almost as much as pure glucose, but a food with a glycemic index of 20 doesn’t raise blood sugar much at all. Note that the value can vary slightly from person to person and from one type or brand of food and another.

Why do Carb counts vary?
Many factors influence how foods test, including differences between the people tested, the recipes, the laboratory techniques, and the fact that no two carrots are exactly alike. Hence, because there is so much variation between foods and between individuals, there is essentially no difference between foods that have a difference of less than at least 5 or 10 points on the glycemic scale.

Why should I choose carbs with a low GI?
Eating a lot of high GI foods can be detrimental to your health because it pushes your body to extremes. In addition, many people have problems processing large increases in blood glucose. This is especially true if you are overweight and sedentary. Hence, you should aim to include more foods (carbs) with a low Glycemic Index in your diet. These are the ones that produce only small fluctuations in our blood glucose and insulin levels – keeping your energy levels balanced, and your body will digest these foods slowly leaving you feeling full for longer and allowing you to eat less calories without feeling hungry. In addition, to its benefits on sustainable weight loss, choosing low GI carbs, is also the key to long-term health, in that they reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

o Low GI diets help people lose and manage weight
o Low GI diets increase the body’s sensitivity to insulin
o Low GI carbs improve diabetes management
o Low GI carbs reduce the risk of heart disease
o Low GI carbs improve blood cholesterol levels
o Low GI carbs can help you manage the symptoms of PCOS
o Low GI carbs reduce hunger and keep you fuller for longer
o Low GI carbs prolong physical endurance
o High GI carbs help re-fuel carbohydrate stores after exercise

What is Glycemic Load?
It’s important to keep in mind, though, that the glycemic index does not take portion size into account. The actual amount any food raises blood sugar has to do both with how glycemic it is, and how much of it you eat. The glycemic load attempts to combine these concepts, and some diets are using the glycemic load for this reason. The formula is to take the number of grams of carbohydrate in the serving, multiply by the glycemic index, and divide by 100.

A diet with a low glycemic load has been linked to a lower risk of heart disease. If a food has a low glycemic load, it almost surely has a low glycemic index, however, it is harder to guess the load from the index. A diet which is low in carbohydrates automatically has a low glycemic load.

Some nutritionists use the following categories for a diet’s glycemic load:
o Low Glycemic Load – Less than 80 points per day
o Medium Glycemic Load – 80-120 points per day
o High Glycemic Load – Over 120 points per day

Examples of the glycemic load of some foods:
o 2 oz peanuts – 1
o 1/2 large grapefruit – 3
o 1/2 cup pinto beans – 6
o 1 medium apple 2 3/4 inch in diameter – 3 per lb – 6
o 2 cups popcorn – 7
o 1 tablespoon honey – 9
o 1 cup orange juice – 12
o 1 cup corn flakes – 21
o 1 cup brown rice – 23
o 1 bagel, 3.5 inches across – 25
o 1 baked potato, 3 inches in diameter (170 grams) – 28
o 1 cup white rice – 33

How to switch to a low GI & low GL Diet?
The basic technique for eating the low GI way is simply a “this for that” approach – ie, swapping high GI carbs for low GI carbs.
o Use breakfast cereals based on oats, barley and bran
o Use breads with wholegrains, stone-ground flour, sour dough
o Reduce the amount of potatoes you eat
o Enjoy all other types of fruit and vegetables
o Use Basmati or Doongara rice
o Enjoy pasta, noodles, quinoa
o Eat plenty of salad vegetables with a vinaigrette dressing

Glycemic Index Food List
The following Food List is by no means exhaustive. It is a good guide and contains quite a long list of foods. You can print it out and stick it to your fridge or inside a cookery book. In addition, at the bottom there are books that I recommend that will have tables of GI values of an extensive list of popular foods. These will make an excellent reference book to have at home.

Reference from the official website of the Glycemic Index and GI Database
Reference for list of low GI foods
Reference for Glycemic Index
Reference for Glycemic Load
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P.S. For more tips and educational articles, join this community.

Have you joined the conversation yet? Like mySKiN&CO’s Facebook page.

Claire Morawski is also the founder of mySKiN&CO – a beauty clinic in Malta. At mySKiN&CO’s blog , Claire shares a lot of information related to beauty – how to achieve a healthy younger looking skin, how to find a good therapist, simple tips of how to take care of your skin at home, why it is important to exfoliate between waxing session, and more. If you are interested, why not join mySKiN&CO community.
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At times reducing the amount of calories we consume, and eating healthier can be easier than we think. Start by making small adjustments weekly. Each week focus on making one adjustment, then the following week gradually introduce another adjustment to your current diet and lifestyle.

This week’s challenge is to take a favourite recipe and ‘lighten it up’. Look at the table of ingredient substitutions below and see how they might work with your favourite recipe. Also look at the tips for cutting down on fat and calories during preparation. You might be surprised to find that you like the lighter version better.

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To Your Health

Imagine you are your stomach in conjunction with your metabolism. At 8am you get a fair amount of food, which you are able to convert into energy to be able to do activities in the morning. Then you get nothing for 6 hours, so your metabolism starts ‘shutting down’ because there is nothing for it to work on, and in addition now it thinks that the body is in starvation mode and starts ‘storing’ food in the form of fat so as to have from where to get energy when the body needs. Then at 2pm you get a large lunch – it is more than you can cope with, because you had slowed down part of the metabolism process, and there is too much food to handle it all. Then nothing again for another 6 hours, and another large dinner at 8pm.

So now you realize the havoc you put on your body, when you do not eat regularly. You should focus on eating about 5 times a day – consisting of small healthy meals, every 3 hours. This will actually help to increase your metabolism. In addition, it makes you feel ‘full’ all the time, so there is less risk of you eating everything that comes in sight, when you are hungry. Hence, in the long run, even though you seem to be eating more often, you are actually keeping your metabolism active and you are more likely to be consuming fewer calories.

To Your Health