The Taiwanese Association of Educators on Friday published a low-glycemic diet cookbook, which nutritionists say can not only help people with diabetes control their blood sugar levels, but can also help people reach and maintain a healthy weight.
Association president Tu Shih-te (杜思德) said food is what mainly affects the amount of sugar in the blood after a meal, but health education clinics have discovered that younger people and older people have different diet preferences, leading to different ways of controlling blood sugar levels.
However, across the different generations, a common problem is a lack of understanding about low glycemic index (GI) diets, Tu said.
According to the American Diabetes Association, “the GI measures how a carbohydrate-containing food increases blood glucose. Foods are ranked based on how they compare with a reference food — either glucose or white bread” and “a food with a high GI increases blood glucose more than a food with a medium or low GI.”
Tu said that many people with diabetes measure their fasting blood sugar levels every day, but do not monitor the amount of sugar in their blood after a meal, which is a risk factor in the development of cardiovascular disease, so choosing the right food — low GI — can help maintain more stable blood sugar levels.
Many young people cannot resist the temptation to eat cakes, sweet beverages such as bubble milk tea, or fruit high in sugar, but these are all high GI foods that can cause a rapid rise in blood sugar after eating, he said, adding that some young people with diabetes believe that they can eat whatever they want as long as they inject insulin regularly.
Association deputy secretary-general Chen Wen-hui (陳紋慧), who is a nutritionist, said some older people have difficulty in chewing, so they prefer to eat soft food such as salty rice porridge, pottage or thick soup (羹), but these foods made with starch gelatinization often have a high GI, and might also be high in fat, salt and sugar.
Some older people with diabetes also like drinking juice rather than eating fresh fruit, but juice does not contain dietary fiber and can be digested faster, so it can cause the blood sugar levels to increase more rapidly, she said.
Association vice president and nutritionist Hsu Pi-hui (許碧惠) said that in order to help people with diabetes establish correct dietary knowledge, the association published the low-GI foods cookbook that includes both Western and Chinese food, and also balanced diets from rich and diverse ingredients.
The association also urged people with diabetes to get regular health checkups, and actively control their blood sugar levels after a meal by choosing the right food, as well as taking prescription medication.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater