Do you know which has a greater insulin releasing effect, ice cream or corn bread? Ice-cream releases much less insulin into your blood than corn bread or even a low-fat bagel.

Most diets want you to cut down on fat-filled ice cream, meat, nuts and eggs, but that’s not really the problem. The important quality is not the amount of fat in a food but rather the tendency of a food to cause your body to produce fat. You produce fat in response to insulin secretion.


Most Americans miss the mark when they try to cut either fat or carbohydrates. If you're doing what they're doing, instead of losing weight and improving health, you're at risk for putting on more fat.


Instead of counting carbohydrates, what you really should be looking at is how high each carbohydrate spikes your blood sugar and insulin. High insulin causes your body to convert any food you eat into fat. If you ignore this, you'll put on fat instead of losing it!

So what's the biggest blood sugar offender? Sweets aren't the problem if you eat them in moderation. The real problem is starches. They cause a much more prolonged elevation of sugar and insulin than simple sugars do.

The best way to monitor for insulin releasing foods is the Glycemic Index. It ranks foods on how much they boost blood sugar and subsequently, insulin. For instance, a food with a Glycemic Index of 50% will cause half of the rise in blood sugar that glucose (pure natural sugar) would. What does all of this mean? The higher a food's Glycemic index, the more fat you'll make from it - even if it has an equal number of calories as a lower Glycemic index food.

You should reduce the amount of foods that score high and substitute lower-scoring foods. Below is a table with common foods and their Glycemic index. In the table, you'll see some surprises:

Lynn Lyons
www.reversingobesity.com