Slow Metabolism: The Bread Connection
July 16, 2018
Do you indulge in the bread basket when you go out for dinner? Listen in as we help you understand how processed carbs lead to insulin resistance, slow metabolism and weight gain, so the next time you are faced with the bread basket at a restaurant, you can politely tell your server to please take it away.
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Transcript
CASSIE: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition this morning. Our topic of discussion is one that I don't think we've ever done in the past and it's one that I feel is thought provoking, so turn up your volume and plan on keeping us with you for the entire hour. The title of today's Dishing Up Nutrition program is Slow Metabolism: The Bread Connection. Now, in light of that title, here's a question for all of you listening. When you go out to eat at a restaurant, are you that person that just can't resist the bread basket that gets served before the meal? Maybe you start the evening with the good intention of not indulging in the bread, but then does it ever happen that you're so hungry you say to yourself, "I'm just going to eat half of a dinner roll" but then suddenly the whole dinner roll is gone and you're reaching for another. It happens.
JOANN: It does happen. Or are you in the good habit of saying, "Please don't bring that bread basket, but you can bring me a salad while I'm waiting." I know most people realize that bread and rolls are processed carbs, and if you have been attending our classes at Nutritional Weight & Wellness, you know the body fat is made from processed carbs and sugar and not dietary fat. So hopefully you've made a good choice also for your meal, such as a chicken breast or steak with a salad, vegetables with butter rather than a burger and fries that would add even more sugar to your intake that day.
CASSIE: Right, and today JoAnn and I really want to help you understand how processed carbs, those poor decisions like the burger and fries, lead to insulin resistance, which means a slow metabolism, and then that unwanted weight gain so that the next time you're faced with the menu, you can make a smart choice. Like JoAnn mentioned, the steak and the steamed vegetables instead of the big old bun on the burger and the fries on the side. Or also like JoAnn mentioned, the next time the bread basket starts coming your way, you can politely ask the server to just take it back. When you make smart decisions, time and again, you're going to continually get closer and closer to reducing your insulin resistance, avoiding prediabetes, avoiding diabetes.
JOANN: That's right. So thank you for tuning in today to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. I'm JoAnn Ridout. I'm a licensed and registered dietitian and I've been teaching people about nutrition for the past five years. Because of ongoing research Cassie and I understand what leads to insulin resistance and obesity. It is definitely the processed carbs. However, we want you to understand why the bread and rolls in that bread basket might just be too many processed carbs for you and why you should start with a salad rather than a dinner roll.
CASSIE: I think that's great advice and I don't think a lot of people would even think that I could ask them to not even bring the bread basket and have a salad instead, but you can, you're the customer. I'm Cassie Weness if you haven't figured that out already. I am also a registered and licensed dietitian. Did my introduction a little later here this morning. I have a little confession to make as we talk about bread and it's connection to a slow metabolism. Back before I realized that I have non-celiac gluten sensitivity and back before I found Nutritional Weight & Wellness, I reached into that bread basket every time I went out to eat and the thing is I thought it was somewhat of a healthy thing as long as I didn't put butter on it. I mean you learned the same thing in college as I did right JoAnn?
JOANN: That is what we were taught.
CASSIE: High carb, low fat, so you can eat the bread if you don't put the butter on it, that's the wrong information. It's wrong, but that's what I was taught in in those nutrition classes. Thankfully today we all know that that way of eating is not based on good science and it does not lead to good health. Today we know that eating high carb, which usually means you're eating a lot of processed carbs like the store bought bread and the pastas and the crackers. We know this leads to belly fat, so it's not eating fat makes us fat. It's eating too many manmade carbs that leads to that spare tire around our waistline.
JOANN: Right, and let's look at what the results from your mindless bread basket eating could look like. First of all, a typical slice of whole grain bread has about 20 grams of carbs and a small dinner roll, which has 13 grams of carbs. Then top it off with, if you had more bread in the basket, like maybe pumpkin bread or something, 50 grams of carbs. If you add them all up, you're over 80 grams of carbohydrates that turns into over 22 spoonfuls of sugar. And that's even before you've had your meal arrive.
CASSIE: Right. I mean that would be obnoxious if that's what was in your meal, but this is before you've even started on your meal. Now let's rewind. Let's say that instead of the bread basket, you were mindful enough to say no, thank you, and you had the waiter take the breadbasket back and bring you a salad instead. Typical garden salad at a restaurant is going to have less than 3 grams of carbs. Even if you happen to be at some restaurant that served you up, a big heaping plate of greens and vegetables for that garden salad, you're not going to be any more than six grams of carbs. Plus that salad is giving you a lot of vitamins and minerals and fiber. It's not going to lead to insulin resistance and a slow metabolism as the bread basket would. And today, we're bashing bread a bit because for some people it just doesn't work, but we're not necessarily saying it's only the gluten bread. I know on this show last time we were on, I think we talked about gluten sensitivity. Today, we're not talking about the gluten, we're just saying bread in general, so don't think you're safe if you find a restaurant in town that offers gluten free bread in a separate uncontaminated breadbasket, because the truth is a lot of those gluten free breads turn to even more sugar than the regular wheat bread does. So you're not doing yourself any favors by eating the gluten free.
JOANN: Yeah, we really must look at weight gain as a result of insulin resistance, which often occurs after eating too much sugar or too many processed carbs or bread over time. We know from research studies that soda pop juice and skim milk, chocolate skim milk especially are the leading causes of obesity in children. We often think of them as liquid candy or liquid sugar. So it's not just about calories it's really more about the type of calories.
CASSIE: Well said. If you still have that old mantra floating around in your head of calories in equals calories out, JoAnn and I are here to tell you that is wrong information. As we talk about the importance of the type of calories you're choosing, and when I think of that in light of insulin resistance and a slow metabolism, it reminds me of the story of the Pima Indians. Now, if any of you listening are avid readers of nutrition books, I'm sure you've at least heard of the Pima Indians. Today they reside mostly in the south central part of Arizona. If you haven't heard of the Pima Indians, the reason why they're studied in nutrition a lot and they're written about in nutrition books, is that they have the highest rate of diabetes and obesity in the country. In fact, half of the Pima adults are obese and this statistic is going to blow you away, this next one, 95 percent of the Pima Indians have diabetes. Almost 100 percent of them have diabetes, so they are studied a lot and looked at a lot and the question is asked why is this? If we contemplate this a little bit, well, why would the Pima Indians have such a high, high rate of diabetes and obesity? Well, first of all, let me say if you think back prior to the 20th century when this ethnic group was eating their traditional diet of whole foods, vegetables and animal protein, there was no obesity and diabetes in this population. But what happened was, and I'm sure some of you know this or you could guess this, I think it was in the early 1900s when the Pima Indians were put on reservations and then once on the reservations, the United States government supplied them with a lot of canned and processed foods. And what happens when we eat canned and processed foods? If you're not sure, stay with us because I'm going to describe what happened to the Pima Indians once they started on all of these government provided foods, but it's time for break.
JOANN: That's right. If you're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. What are you eating that might be too high in carbs for your body? Let's look at some carb numbers and see. Maybe you grab a small bag of tortilla chips for a snack that has over 18 grams of carbs or 4 1/2 teaspoons of sugar. Or maybe a blueberry muffin, a large blueberry muffin which has 68 grams of carbs or 17 teaspoons of sugar. What about a piece of pie? Strawberry rhubarb pie has 54 grams of carbs or 13 1/2 teaspoons of sugar. Even a cup of ice cream, which is a favorite summer treat, has 32 grams of carbs or 8 teaspoons of sugar. Studies show that most people can stay healthy eating about 100 grams of carbs per day, but when I saw that a blueberry muffin has 68 grams of carbs, I was totally shocked. You're already over half your limit with just one food item. Or eating a bowl of ice cream with 8 teaspoons of sugar every night, that surely could be the reason you have insulin resistance and prediabetes.
CASSIE:Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Before we jump back into our topic of the bread connection to a slow metabolism, I want to let all of you know that next month, so the month of August, we really want to help you start to get refocused on your nutrition for the fall. So one of the things we're doing is we are offering a variety of our 90 minute classes for,get this, only $10. We are definitely in the business of helping people get better, not money ourselves because that's a steal. So $10 per 90 minute class. The classes we're offering are Good Foods for Good Moods, Getting a Good Night's Sleep, The Magic of Minerals, Five Steps to Boost Metabolism and a very popular one called Eating to Reduce Pain and Inflammation. I highly encourage you to sign up for one or two or all five of these classes. You'll learn the information that you need to put good nutrition into practice. Our wonderful teachers will show you how to implement this new information into your life in phases or what I like to call baby steps. As we've been talking about for the past few weeks on Dishing Up Nutrition, most of us make changes successfully when we do it in baby steps versus trying to change everything that we're doing wrong overnight. Remember, achieving great health is a marathon, not a sprint, and I honestly feel another great benefit of taking these classes is that when you enter the classroom, you're surrounded by likeminded people that are there to learn and to support each other and by all means bring a friend or a family member. The more people we can reach with this science based way of eating to support great health, the easier it becomes for all of us to navigate this world because we'll be growing the community of likeminded nutrition people that support each other’s efforts. So if you're at all interested in Good Foods for Good Moods or Five Steps to Boost Metabolism or any of the other $10 classes I mentioned earlier. Call the office at 651-699-3438 and reserve your spot.
Alright, so I was telling, I really enjoy history. I think I inherited that gene from my dad. But I was talking about the Pima Indians. So if we look back in history when they got pushed onto reservations and they no longer had their land to farm and raise their own vegetables and they weren't out hunting anymore, the government supplied them then with a lot of canned and processed foods and I suppose still does today on these reservations. That's when their health started to spiral downward. So these government foods are things like cold breakfast cereal, crackers, pasta store, bought breads. Once those became readily available and replaced the Pima's traditional diet of vegetables and wild game. It didn't take long. It was around the 1950s when there became an epidemic of obesity and type two diabetes in this ethnic group. And it really just breaks my heart whenever I read about the Pima Indians, because before they were forced onto reservations back when they were farming their own food and living off the land, they had no one with obesity and, get this, they considered type two diabetes, a white man's disease, because back then the Pima Indians did not get diabetes.
JOANN: That's right. That's an amazing story, Cassie.
CASSIE: And it really shows the connection that food matters to our health.
JOANN: When their whole culture changed and their whole population changed. But look around today, are we setting our children up to have obesity and diabetes with the foods we're feeding them? It's so easy, so convenient to give your kids or your grandkids juice boxes with 24 grams of carbs or 6 teaspoons of sugar. Yes, you did hear that right? Six teaspoons of sugar in one juice box. Their school serves low fat chocolate milk with 26 grams of carbs or another 6 1/2 teaspoons of sugar.
CASSIE: You know, when I was a kid, we did not get chocolate milk at school. Now they get it every day and it's full of added sugar.
JOANN:Exactly. And even after soccer practice, a Gatorade has 22 grams of carbs or another 5 1/2 teaspoons of sugar, so they just drank 18 teaspoons of sugar in their drinks with no snacks yet, or food between 6:00 AM and 5:00 PM. So most traditional cultures drink either whole milk or water, not sugar. So this reminds me of when my kids were young, in the 90s, I remember looking around at all the juice boxes and all the crackers and all the packaged snacks that my friends were giving their kids. I usually had my kids bringing water bottles to their games because I knew they needed to be hydrated. They didn't need all this sugar, but it's hard to buck that it is with kids because Gatorade was the norm and the expectation, and the parents rotate on snacks and treats after baseball or soccer, and that's the expectation that that is what you bring. So it's really hard. It's a hard battle.
CASSIE: It is hard. But stick to your guns. Water is the choice for those athletes. I mean, what are we teaching them when they go out, practice hard, run hard, they're creating these muscular athletic bodies and then we feed them a crap load of sugar in a bottle. There's such a disconnect. I liked when you posed that question earlier, JoAnn, because I really want to get everyone listening thinking about this. Are we setting up our kids to have diabetes by the sugar filled drinks we're giving them and by the foods, you know, the processed carbs like the breads and the potato chips? And it reminded me as I listened to you talking, JoAnn, how shocked I was when my girlfriend that I graduated from college with who's also a registered dietitian, was hired shortly out of college by the International Diabetes Center to work with young kids with type two diabetes. Now that was so surprising to me at the time because back when I started college in the mid-1990s, we called type two diabetes, adult onset diabetes, right? I mean I remember specifically learning the average age to get type two diabetes back when I started college was 60 years old and above. And then my girlfriend and I graduated college and shortly after she got hired to work with 9- and 10-year-olds with what used to be known as an adult's disease. So it does matter what we are feeding our kids. And on that note, I was paging through a really good book here in preparation for the show and I just want to share a little bit of what was in this book. The book I'm referring to is called The Obesity Code. Some of you may have heard of it, the author is Dr. Jason Fung and he does a good job in the book explaining why your body's own insulin is really the key to controlling your weight and here's what he says, one of the many things he says that I think is really profound. Dr. Fung says, "Insulin is the major hormonal driver of weight gain. Insulin causes adult obesity. Insulin causes newborn obesity. Insulin causes infant obesity. Insulin causes childhood obesity."
JOANN: Yeah, that's pretty profound. We actually need to go to a break now. We'll come right back to our topic in a few minutes. You are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition, brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. Next week we are starting our Nutrition 4 Weight Loss Series in seven different locations. When Kristy took Nutrition 4 Weight Loss, she'd lost a total of 30 pounds in 12 weeks. She did tell me that she gave up bread and most grains, which does correspond to our topic. She did say she may not have lost weight so quickly otherwise. Another example is Carol who lost 20 pounds in 12 weeks and Ann lost 12 pounds in 12 weeks. So here are a few things they all had in common, more energy, less inflammation, better moods. So some of our class participants lose more inches than weight during the 12 weeks, but they report their clothes fit better, they have fewer aches and pains and they feel great. If you'd like to join our class, please call us at 651-699-3438 or go to our website at weightandwellness.com.
CASSIE: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. If you're just joining us, I'm Cassie Weness and I'm here in studio with JoAnn Ridout. And both of us gave out wrong phone numbers before we went to commercial a few minutes ago. Just to redo this, if you are interested in signing up for Nutrition 4 Weight Loss or calling our office for any reason, our Nutritional Weight & Wellness office number is 651-699-3438. If you have a question for JoAnn or I today about the bread connection to a slow metabolism, you can call us here at the studio at 651-641-1071. Did I get that right?
JOANN: You did. And thank you for clarifying that.
CASSIE: Well, I gave out a wrong number too, so we got a little jumbled there. Before we jump back into topic, I was thinking of something over break and I want to share with the listeners in our class called Five Steps to Boost Metabolism, we have a really great graphic, a great slide where it shows a loaf of bread and some delicious looking dinner rolls and the title on top of that slide is "The Body Makes Fat From Carbs." So true, right? And I really don't think it's any new way of thinking necessarily. I mean, I think even my grandma's generation knew that if they wanted to lose weight, they needed to eat a little less or maybe give up altogether, they're toast and their sandwiches and their dinner rolls. So here's the question for all of you listening, would you be willing to substitute a salad or substitute some cooked vegetables in place of the bread over the next three weeks and see how you feel? It didn't take me long, you know, I was forced to give up bread for medical reasons and I cried and honestly overnight my cravings were gone and it didn't take more than a week or so that I did not miss the bread at all because the vegetables have so much more texture and flavor. So I really encourage you, I challenge you to give it a try, try it for three weeks, get the bread out, replace it with vegetables, and I think you'll find that some magical things happen.
JOANN: That's right. So back to our topic or to continue our topic we're talking about today, are we a culture of high insulin? I think we have said we seem to be. We are, according to Jason Fung, Dr. Jason Fung in The Obesity Code, he posed that question. Are we like the Pima Indians that Cassie talked about? And now it's all about processed carbs for many Americans. So interestingly babies born to mothers with gestational diabetes have three times the risk of obesity and diabetes later in life.
CASSIE: That is interesting. And I look back, JoAnn, and I don't think all mothers, you know, like my mom's generation, I don't think they were always tested, and I just wonder if some of those bigger babies that were born had moms with gestational diabetes. So something to think about.
JOANN: Right. Those children who are obese in childhood have more than 17 times the risk of obesity going into adulthood. And this topic is very near and dear to my heart because I was one of those babies that was born with insulin resistance. My mom had gestational diabetes and even all those years ago, she did know and she was tested. I was a preemie and I was fed formula containing corn syrup. If you put all those factors together, I gained weight very quickly as an infant of course, I have fought weight gain and insulin resistance my whole life. So I didn't really learn the reason why until I started working at Nutritional Weight & Wellness. I learned this information from Dr. Robert Lustig's work. His book, Fat Chance, that was a big a-ha moment for me. So Dr. Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist, about five years ago I started putting these pieces together and I thought, no wonder I gained weight so easily in my childhood and throughout my whole life. And just knowing that has made it very easy for me to give up the bread.
CASSIE: Okay, okay. There's the happy ending.
JOANN: Making that connection, it's just like, that's a no brainer for me now.
CASSIE: Well you are such a positive person that I would have guessed that's what you would have taken away because I imagined JoAnn, I listened to your story, if some people were to learn, I was born insulin resistant. I was born behind the eight ball. I'm destined to weight gain. They may have thrown up their hands and said this is what's going to be but you took it the other way and he said, okay, no, I was born at a disadvantage so I have to be more conscious and more mindful and give up the bread.
JOANN: And I'm past the age when my mom started medication for her diabetes, for her type two diabetes. That she developed later in life. My blood sugars are fine and my hemoglobin A1C is fine, although I have to be very, very careful to keep it that way. I do know that. So you can prevent it, that's the bottom line.
CASSIE: Exactly. Exactly. You're doing wonderful things. Okay, let's get back to how bread and other carbohydrates made from white flour, slow our metabolism and cause weight gain. But first I think we should help listeners get a better understanding of why too much insulin circulating in our body causes obesity. And even more importantly, I really want to answer the question, JoAnn, for our listeners, how do we lower our insulin level so that weight loss occurs?
JOANN: That's right. So the reality is that all carbs are not created equal. We talked about juice and soda, they lack fiber. They therefore push your blood sugar up and call for a release of insulin. So if you're eating a piece of whole fruit instead, that has fiber still intact. This releases the sugar carbohydrate much more slowly so a lot less insulin is needed. We always tell people it's always better to eat fruit, whole piece of fruit rather than juice. It's much less sugar. Much less sugar. And usually it's several pieces of fruit that makeup one glass of juice.
CASSIE: It's like six oranges to make a small eight-ounce glass of juice.
JOANN: What are you eating or drinking that's creating a quick sugar carb release. Is it juice or is it a slice of banana bread? Maybe a coffee mocha? Remember that banana bread has 61 grams of carbs and a coffee mocha has 44 grams of carbs. The two together add up to over a 105 grams of carbs. That's 26 teaspoons of sugar and that's a whole lot of insulin that needs to be released to deal with all of that sugar.
CASSIE: Exactly. So if that's a typical routine for you to have a piece of banana bread and a mocha or maybe it's the big plate of pasta in the evening with the garlic bread. These foods, these processed carbs as JoAnn is saying, release a lot of sugar into your bloodstream or create a lot of sugar in your bloodstream, and so you have to make a lot of insulin to deal with that sugar and it doesn't take long before all that excess insulin circulating in your body puts a coating over your cells. Or I always think of it as a crust over your cells. So if you can come along with me and visualize because I don't have the pleasure of having slides up in front of your face right now to show this. But imagine that all of your muscle cells have this hard crust over them. And so now when you sit down to eat, maybe you have that slice of banana bread and a glass of orange juice. Now you have all this sugar in your blood. Your insulin comes along to try to get that sugar into your muscle cells for energy. But here's that hard crust and it can't get through. So now this sugar is sitting in your blood and your body says, I have to put it somewhere. And so your body dumps that excess sugar into your fat stores. There's your connection. That's a big connection we want to make today between eating those foods made with white flour of any kind that creates high sugar leads to high insulin and that eventually leads to fat storage.
JOANN: That's right. So when I'm working with clients to explain this topic, I always tell people you are the gatekeeper, you're in charge of how much insulin your body is going to release because of your sugar intake. And that is what determines storage fat.
CASSIE: Right because as we just said, if you're eating high sugar foods, most of the time your body will release high levels of insulin. Insulin is your fat storing hormone.
JOANN: Let's look at some other common high carb foods that can lead people to produce more of that fat storing hormone. A six inch sub sandwich has 44 grams of carbs, or 11 teaspoons of sugar. If you add chips and a cookie, you have another 59 grams of carbs, almost 15 teaspoons of sugar. So that's a total of 26 teaspoons. And that's if you drink water with your lunch.
CASSIE: Right and we know not everybody does that.
JOANN: Exactly. So a lot of insulin will be released and I'm getting signals, it's time for break. You are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. During the rest of July we're offering a 15 percent discount to you on our Weight & Wellness Way Cookbook and Nutrition Guide. I absolutely love this cookbook. I use it every week, so I highly recommend you take advantage of the savings and pick up a copy of our Weight & Wellness Way Cookbook and Nutrition Guide one of our seven offices or on our website weightandwellness.com. I gave this cookbook to my sister and she proceeded to lose 40 pounds. So that's a really good story about this book. So if you're starting to see little lines around your eyes, you will want to tune in next week to hear Cassie and Carolyn talk about food and supplements to help your skin age gracefully. When it comes to keeping wrinkles away, food matters.
CASSIE: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Before we get back to talking about foods that lead to a broken metabolism, I want to take a minute to thank our listeners, whether you've been with us from the beginning, which would mean you've been listening to Dishing Up Nutrition for more than a decade now, or whether you're new, we want to say thank you. And if you have a friend or a family member that you know would benefit from this particular podcast or any of our podcasts for that matter, please help spread our message that real food matters by sharing this or any of our other podcasts with them. Having the right knowledge empowers people to make better food choices. These Dishing Up Nutrition shows provide that knowledge, so do share them with others in your life. And one more thing, while I'm thinking of it, JoAnn, before we went to commercial, you mentioned that our Weight and Wellness Way Cookbook is on sale this month and I brought mine into the studio to show you how much I love it. Isn't that so beat up?
JOANN: Mine looks a lot like that.
CASSIE: Well, I'm always stuffing it back into my bookshelf and I've torn the pages and it's got food splashed on it because they probably set it too close to my work area, but I love this cookbook. I have so many favorites in here that I cook weekly, but for sake of time I'm just going to share one that is right here on page 122. So if you have the Weight & Wellness Cookbook, pull it out, check out page one, 22. It's Sonoma Chicken Salad. It is so, so delicious. You've made it haven't you? The dressing that you make yourself with is just mayo, apple cider vinegar, maple syrup and poppy seeds. It's so quick to make, but it really makes the salad.
JOANN: Yes. And I make that salad to take the family reunions during the summer, so that's how good it is.
CASSIE: Then you know that you have something that is healthy and tasty.
JOANN: That's what I do.
CASSIE: Great idea. Do you have a favorite? I'm sure you have many favorites.
JOANN: I have many favorites. It's hard to pick just one, but last week I made the Mexican Chicken Wraps. I don't have the page number in front of me, but that is such a good recipe.
CASSIE: You can look it up in the index recipe and it's easy and so delicious. Yes, I do like that one too.
JOANN: Easy crockpot chicken recipe instead of corn, I put some black beans in it because I don't tolerate corn very well. And black beans are good substitute for corn. Other than that, I love that recipe and then you make it in a lettuce wrap with romaine lettuce. So very, very good.
CASSIE: All right, so okay, back to our topic. One thing I wanted to mention again, another thing I was thinking of over break it. My middle schooler was telling me not that long ago that a lot of his friends get these Caribou Coolers at Caribou and thankfully this was one time when I say thankfully we have food allergies, it's not even an option for us. But in preparing for the show, I got curious and I looked up these Caribou Coolers and there's a new thing on the menu this summer called Caribou Coolers with Bubbles, whatever that means, but I looked up a medium, so not even a large, but a medium Caribou Cooler. Get this, 126 grams in that one medium drink. So think of it this way, that's 31 1/2 teaspoons of sugar that your middle schooler or your teenager just spooned down their throat. Obnoxious. So you know an iced coffee, ask them to leave an inch and a half at the top and put some heavy cream in it, would be a much better choice and zero sugar. So on that note, how else can you reduce your consumption of these high sugar drinks? How can you reduce your consumption of processed carbs and still enjoy life? I think we should give a couple of examples. I'll start it off. Here's an idea I don't think we've given on the radio before. How about some egg salad in the morning? Get a little nontraditional jazz it up a little bit. Pretty much any standard egg salad recipe will work as long as you're using a healthy mayonnaise. I talked about this last time I was on the radio, either a mayonnaise with avocado oil or expeller pressed safflower oil, no other types of oil. Those would be good and put that egg salad on top of a couple of Wasa light rye crackers. Now crackers are a processed food, but if you're gonna, choose a cracker, that is your best choice because it's only got like two or three ingredients so it's least processed and the rye flour does not spike your blood sugar very high compared to a wheat flour. Now in our house, we can't do those because rye contains gluten and we are gluten free, so I do the Mary's Gone Crackers which are delicious and they're a whole grain high fiber cracker. Then if you want coffee, I look forward to my cup of coffee every morning, but I make it at home. I keep it to 10 or 12 ounces and I put a tablespoon of organic heavy cream in it. So a delicious breakfast like this is only 10 grams of carbs versus the 105 grams of carbs that JoAnn talked about earlier if you got some banana bread and a mocha at the coffee shops. My breakfast is the healthier choice if you are asking.
JOANN: Yes, that's right. So that healthier breakfast delivers a slow release of insulin, back to what we're talking about. So that's a great idea. So then at lunchtime, rather than getting a sub sandwich, did you know you can order tuna salad at a sub sandwich shop? You can order tuna salad and asked them to put it on salad greens.
CASSIE: So no bun.
JOANN:No bun. You're just holding the bread. You have only 10 grams of carbs in that tuna salad itself. So you can even eat two servings for a total of 20 grams of carbs versus 105 grams in a sub sandwich, chips and a cookie that is so high in carbs.
CASSIE: That's easy though, isn't it? You just have to know some of these substitution ideas before you walk into the restaurant. Easy switch and that sounds good to me.
JOANN: It does.
CASSIE: A double dose of tuna salad on top of some salad greens. Yum. You know, taking in the right number of carbs to support your body takes planning and a commitment to your health. But it is so worth it because as your insulin levels go down, so do the numbers on the scale and so do your blood sugar numbers. And I am so sorry, JoAnn is over there whispering to me that I forgot we had a caller during the last break that didn't want to go on air, but she had a couple of great questions. So one was she wanted to know what do we think of substituting tortillas and flat breads in place of bread? I think we both have the same answer. Do you want to take it?
JOANN: Well they both have gluten, they both have wheat, they both have carbs. I would look at the carb content on the wrapper because most of those things would have between 20 and 40 and that's just a wild guess, but you want to look at the carb count on the wrapper.
CASSIE:Because all carbs turn to sugar eventually.
JOANN: They're going to turn to sugar. So you if you're getting a number 20 to 40 and divide by four, that turns to between 5 and 10 teaspoons of sugar.
CASSIE: Yeah. You're really going to be best substituting vegetables. You know, like a great example at our house and we have sloppy joes, in our minds there's no bun there. We have it on our plate and we have a nice big heaping of vegetables beside it. So you just kinda, if you can forgo those things made from flour because not just bread, it's the tortillas in the flatbreads too. On that note, there is a coconut wrap that I remember Brenna would talk about made from coconut flour that I think you can get at Whole Foods and those types of places. That was quite a bit lower in carbs, that might work. The other question she had was what do we think have quinoa versus rice?
JOANN: And that, again, I'm probably turns to less sugar because it's more of a seed than a grain but it's still kind of a grain like thing. It's kinda one of those hard, hard foods to put it into a category. So I would really listen to your body. Some people would be able to do a half a cup of quinoa just fine, and keeping that portion is important, but some people might get bloated from grains or carbs, so really listened to your body to figure out if you do tolerate it or not, especially if your carb sensitive.
CASSIE: Right. I think that's a great response. I agree with you and I think when it comes to serving sizes, whether it's quinoa or rice, you want to keep the serving size low, keep it the same because as you said, both are going to act similar and drive your blood sugar up in a similar manner. So a half a cup cooked at most and I don't even think that would work for me because I have sensitive blood sugars that might be too much. And if you are choosing rice, brown rice or wild rice would be certainly a better choice than white
JOANN: Definitely. So I think it's time to get back to the basics. We talk about the magic of three real protein, vegetable carbs, real fats, eating three meals, each day, a few snacks. Eat about every three to four hours to balance our blood sugar. Our goal at Nutritional Weight & Wellness is to help each and every person experience better health through eating real food. A simple, powerful message. Eating real food is life changing. Thank you for listening and have a wonderful day.
