10 ways to reduce the Glycemic Index (GI) of foods

This post is in response to a comment where someone asked me how we can calculate the GI of various kinds of food. That's a good question and I wish I had a purely quantitative answer. I am afraid calculating GI is not as straightforward as counting calories. The link I'm giving below is a good place to start and has gi and gl values for many common foods, but what happens is every variable has its own effect on GI, so we cannot take this list as a bible.

http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm

Here are some simple things to keep in mind for selecting low GI foods and for lowering the GIs of high GI foods:

1. Undercook rather than overcook. If a food is pasty, it's probably high gi. This applies to pasta, rice, noodles and just about any boiled starch

2. Eat a starch cold rather than right off the stove. In fact putting something in the fridge and then letting it warm back up to room temperature is a great way to reduce GI

3. Add something acidic like lemon juice, vinegar, etc. This lowers GI

4. Pick a higher fiber option or add fiber through vegetables. Strangely enough not all high-fiber foods are low GI, because, as I said, many variables affect GI.

5. Replace some portion of a high GI cereal with a low GI cereal. For example, add whole moong dal to rice or besan to rotis.

6. Pick larger particle sizes. Daliya instead of atta, for example.

7.Add a small quantity of ghee, butter or cheese, but please don't overdo it :)

8.Avoid pasty or mashed starches.

9. Pick firm fruit rather than overripe fruit.

10. Avoid eating a lot of starch in one meal. This takes some training. You have to teach your stomach to fill up on the veggies and the dals and get used to a lower quantity of rice/roti. 150 grams of rice (which is just one tea cup full) or 2-2.5 rotis is the upper limit if you want to keep your blood sugar stable.

Note: BTW, some good news. One of the most common varieties of rice we eat in India called Sona Mahsuri is not very high GI. So as long as you limit the quantity of rice you eat at one time to about a 150 gms, you should be able to eat rice. Basmati is not too bad either, but Sona Mahsuri is better.

Low GI Jowar Vermicelli Upma

Hi,

This is the latest in my series of experiments with grains other than the wheat and rice we typically eat. I found a packet of Jowar Vermicelli at the local super market and thought it was worth a try. Now, I typically make vermicelli upma with wheat vermicelli and vegetables, so I figured the same recipe should work with a few tweaks for Jowar vermicelli. For the most part, the recipe worked just fine, except that the end result was a little stickier and didn't dry out as nicely as wheat vermicelli does, but no complaints with respect to the taste.

Here are the GI facts. 180 gms of cooked wheat vermicelli has a GL of 16 and a GI of 35-40 (unfortunately, I don't have the figures for Jowar, but I believe they may be a little higher than wheat). Those are reasonable figures, but we do want to bring it down to about 10 or 11 for it to be truly low GI. So, as usual, we use our favorite method to bring down GI and amp up nutrition. We add veggies. 120 gms of vermicelli makes about 300 gms of cooked vermicelli. That's typically enough to serve three people for breakfast. So, my guess is each serving should not have a GI greater than 10 or 11.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients for Upma:
100 gms of Jowar vermicelli or regular wheat vermicelli
Very small piece of ginger grated
One big onion chopped finely
1 medium carrot chopped into small pieces
1 small bowl chopped cabbage
1 small potato chopped into small pieces
2-3 green chilis slit length-wise
1 small tomato chopped finely
3 cups water
Oil to taste
Salt to taste

For tempering:
4-5 curry leaves

1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp dehusked black gram (urad dal)
Peanuts (optional)


Method:

Roast the vermicelli in a little oil or ghee until lightly browned.

In a non-stick wok (I recommend this as this Jowar vermicelli tends to be a little sticky), heat up some oil and toss in the mustard seeds and black gram. Fry until the black gram turns orange. Then, throw in the curry leaves. Once the leaves are fried, add the onions, green chilis and grated ginger and fry for 4-5 mins on medium heat. Then add the remaining vegetables and fry them for 4-5 mins on medium heat. Add salt to taste. Cover and cook until the vegetables are done.

Add three cups of water (you may need less water for wheat vermicelli.) and cover until the water starts to boil. Put in the roasted vermicelli and cook until the water is absorbed. Cover and cook on low flame for another 5 mins. Turn off the flame and keep the lid on for another 5-10 mins.













You can roast some peanuts in a little oil and add them to the upma, if you like.

Serve hot :). Tell me how it turned out.

Gotta Love Paneer (south indians included)

Several South Indians are not fans of Paneer, me included. No matter how I cook the damn thing, the spices never seem to penetrate its thick hide. The core is always milky white and bland. But-and there's always a but-Paneer is a very benign food from a glycemic load perspective. No definitive figures here, but I believe it has only about 10 gms of carbs in a 183 gms serving, so the glycemic load is about 7, hence this post.

I've tried Paneer in many forms and tolerated it in most, but the two recipes that have kinda worked for me are recipes I invented. One is a sort of tossed paneer salad and the other is a tava paneer. Both recipes are simple and any additions to the base paneer are even lower GI, so overall both dishes should be very low GI, though I cannot give you an accurate figure.

First up is the tossed paneer salad recipe. You can use this as a filling in a Kathi roll made of misi roti if you like or you can eat it as is.

Ingredients:

200 gms paneer (cut into cubical chunks about 3/4th of an inch in size. You can make them larger if you like)
1 big onion, cut into 3/4th inch pieces, kind of the way you cut onions to put them on a skewer (seekh)
2 small ripe tomatoes, cut into 3/4th inch size cubes. Remove the core of the tomatoes.The seeds are a mood killer in this recipe. I just eat the core. I never waste it.
1 big capsicum cut into 3/4th inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon of roasted zeera powder
Salt to taste
A pinch of sugar
Pepper or red chili powder (whichever you like better)
1 tablespoon of ghee. Oil will do fine too, but I prefer ghee.

In a non-stick wok, heat the ghee till it is sizzling hot. Throw in all the cut veggies and fry them on high heat. The reason we fry them on high heat is so that it doesn't get all watery. I like the veggies quite firm, but you can fry them as much as you like. For me the veggies are done when the skin of the capsicum shrivels just a little bit. Then, put in the roasted zeera powder, the salt, the pepper and the pinch of sugar. At this stage, you can add a teaspoon of tomato ketchup, if you like the taste. If you add ketchup, omit the sugar. Fry on low heat for a couple of minutes more and then toss in the paneer. Let the paneer get coated with the spice mixture and then fry it for another couple of minutes. The final product should be slightly moist, but certainly not wet.

You can eat this like a snack or you can roll it into a misi roti to make a kathi roll. You can also eat it as a side dish with any kind of roti. The key is to eat this straight off the stove or it's no fun.

Next up is the tava paneer. I eat this as a snack and it's ridiculously simple to make.

Ingredients

200 gms paneer sliced into big square or triangular pieces that are about a centimeter thick. You can slice them thicker if you like.
Roasted zeera powder
Pepper/red chili powder (optional)
Salt
Ghee to toast. Ghee tastes best with this recipe.

On an iron tawa (like a roti tawa), pour a small portion of the ghee and toast 4-5 pieces of paneer on both sides. Sprinkle the salt, zeera powder and pepper. Turn the pieces over and toast on the other side. Now, how firm you want the paneer is really a matter of taste. I just toast it enough to fry the spices a little ,about 1 minute on each side, and I take it off before the paneer starts to get crisp. This is because I like it soft. You can increase the amount of ghee and toast the paneer until it gets quite crisp too.

This snack is pretty healthy, if you go easy on the fat. And you get a good amount of protein this way.

So that's it for today. Tell me how you like it, if you try it :)