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       So, you’ve been considering making healthier decisions, and one of those decisions is to start eating better. One of the best ways to start is to go organic. No, this doesn’t mean you have to grow your own organic garden, although that would be great! Going organic can be as simple as making a few small adjustments to your lifestyle, but you may just see a big improvement in your overall health. In this article, I will discuss why it’s a good idea to go organic, give you some reasons to do so, and throw out some tips to get you started on your organic journey.

        September is National Organic Harvest Month, also called Organic Food Celebration Month. For this reason alone, what better time that now to make the switch to organic? Millions of people have made the choice already, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down. Did you know, as of 2015, there are over 1,000 community supported agricultural programs in the United States. Ten years ago, there were zero. On top of this, there are now over 10,000 organic farms in the U.S. alone!  Organic food sales in the States have grown between 20 - 25% annually for the last 7 years. Overall sales have been between 3.5 and 4.2 billion dollars, and that’s just in America! Source: Organic Consumers Association - organicconsumers.org\

       Just because there is a huge movement towards going organic, there is also an equally huge push in the other direction as well, unfortunately. A generation ago, 3/4 of meals in the United States were made at home. Today, 3/4 of meals are prepared outside the home. Of course, these meals are mainly consumed at fast- food restaurants. Even more frightening, between 50-70 million acres of farmland are currently sown with GM (genetically modified) seeds. Four years ago, that acreage was 0. Source: Organic Consumers Association This is in large part thanks to Monsanto and it’s teams of scientists, who want to own our food supply. They’ve gone as far as hiring Blackwater, a private security firm (basically their own army) to protect their proprietary labs and seed banks. Why does a seed company need an army? Why do we need a seed company with it’s own army? This is a discussion for another article, but this scary trend is another great reason to go organic - when people start taking back their foods, companies like Monsanto will be forced to change the way they do business, and millions of non-educated people will no longer unknowingly be fed foods that are totally unnatural and bad for the environment as a whole. The government is complicit in this as well - the FDA doesn’t require GM foods to be labeled as such. Even they know that if more people were aware of this, this practice would soon be forced to end.

      Now that you (hopefully) see why it’s a good idea to at least give organic a try, here are a few tips culled from organicitsworthit.org:

1. Prepare one meal with as many organic ingredients as possible. Don’t forget to serve the organic beverage of your choice with your meal and enjoy an organic dessert. Make it a celebration!

2. Go Shopping and fill one grocery bag with all organic products. Remember, organic isn’t just in the produce aisle, it’s in the frozen section, in the health and beauty department, and it appears everywhere between dairy and canned goods. If you can’t find organic items in your store, talk to your grocer to find our about bringing some in. It may cost a bit more than non- organic, but the taste and health benefits, not to mention the environmental pluses, are so worth it.

3. Wear organic cotton clothing, available in everything from socks to sweaters. Enjoy the comfort and style while you support agriculture that builds healthy soils and protects the environment. 

4. Indulge yourself. Take a long bath in water scented in organic oils. Niggle on rich, organic chocolate. Sip organic wine, beer, or even a martini made with organic vodka. Buy your sweetheart a bouquet of organically grown flowers. Cuddle in a towel or robe made from organic cotton.

5. Say thank you to an organic grower or producer because they’re the ones who bring organic food and fiber products to tables and stores all across North America. Grab a friend and go to your local farmer’s market, where you can buy organic produce directly from a certain organic grower and say “thanks!”

Some currently popular eating plans like The Perricone Prescription, A Week in the Zone and The Protein Power Lifeplan recommend low glycemic foods.

The theory is that sugar and high glycemic carbs that rapidly convert to sugar trigger a release of insulin to control the level of sugar in the bloodstream. Excess sugar in the bloodstream is inflammatory and causes a cascade of free radical damage.

To explain how dangerous this is, Dr, Perricone points out that diabetics with poorly controlled blood sugar age one third faster than nondiabetics and are prone to kidney failure, blindness, heart attack and stroke.

So insulin comes to the rescue to clear the excess sugar from the bloodstream. And what do you suppose the insulin does with all this sugar? It stores it as fat. And worse yet, until the insulin sweeps up the excess sugar, it runs rampant throughout the body causing glycation and cross-linking of the body’s collagen.

         The effect is visible on the skin, which becomes leathery and inflexible as we age. Though it can’t be seen, the same damage is taking place inside the body where it affects other vital organs including the kidneys, lungs and brain.

So far, so good. Nutritionists have recommended that people cut their consumption of sugar for decades. The surprise when one ranks sugars and carbs by their glycemic index, is that some foods we normally think of as healthy show up as being bad for you.

The glycemic index is a ranking from 1 to 100, with 100 indicating the increase in blood sugar from eating table sugar (or white bread in one scale). Whichever scale is used, the important thing is a rank ordering of a food’s effect on blood sugar.

The low glycemic food diets mentioned above have different cut off points. For example, Dr. Perricone’s 28-day program prohibits any foods that score above 50 on the glycemic scale. That leaves out such things as bananas, bagels, carrots, corn, potatoes, rice and watermelon.

You can read more about the glycemic index (GI) and view the whole table http://www.mendosa.com/gi.htm here. This site is authored by David Mendoza, a freelance medical writer and consultant specializing in diabetes. The site is a gold mine of information. Or, you can read it right here. How convenient. 

Mr. Mendoza points out that a food’s glycemic index tells you how rapidly a particular carb turns into sugar, but not how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving. In other words, it’s not just the quality of the carb, but also the quantity, that counts.

The version of glycemic index on his site (courtesy of Professor Jennie-Brand Miller of the University of Sydney) includes a column called glycemic load (GL) as well as a column of serving size in grams. A glycemic load of 20 or more is considered high; 11 to 19 is medium; and 10 or less is low.

Looking at this bigger picture, some of the “bad” carbs in low-glycemic food diets turn out to be not so bad. A 120g serving of watermelon has a horrible GI of 74 but a very low GL of 4. A medium banana (129g) has a bad GI of 51 but a medium GL of 13. An 80g serving of carrots has a borderline GI of 47 but a low GL of only 3. The same amount of corn has a GI of 47 but a low GL of 7.

On the other hand, some carb foods look bad whether you go by the GI or the GL. A 70g bagel has a high GI (72) as well as a high GL (25). A 150g serving of boiled white rice has a GI of 56 and a GL of 24. A medium baked potato (159g) has a high GI (60) and a marginal GL (18).

If you decide to concentrate on low-glycemic foods, I recommend you focus on a food’s glycemic load. Just be careful to adhere to the indicated serving sizes (or adjust the calculation accordingly), GL is a better measure of how much sugar in total is being poured into the bloodstream and the amount of sugar that will be stored as fat.

This article is for informational purposes only. It does not purport to offer medical advice.

For more articles on diet and nutrition, visit http://www.ageless-beauty.com/antiaging-nutrition.html

Summary:

Low glycemic foods help control insulin levels and your weight

Keywords:

low glycemic foods, diet, nutrition, healthy eating, eating healthy

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