Many low-carb diets talk about the glycemic index. What does this mean? The glycemic index is a way of trying to figure out how much a food will raise your blood glucose. Since low-carb diets work by producing a smaller rise in blood sugar (all carbohydrates are broken down into sugar in your body), knowing the right foods to eat is important. However, the glycemic index has real problems when it comes to predicting how any one person's blood glucose will react to a food. Come learn about the glycemic index -- its promises and problems, and the GI of some common foods.

Photo © Eugene Bochkarev

• What is the Glycemic Index?
  
  
• Is the Glycemic Index Useful?
  
  
• Glycemic Index Food List
  
  
• What is the Glycemic Load?

Yesterday when I picked my daughter up from school, she fairly bounced into the car. "The Farmer's Market starts today!" Every Tuesday from May to November, our Farmer's Market is the place to be, and I felt a thrill of pleasure as we rounded the corner to the sights, sounds, and smells of the farmers' stalls, the music, and the friendly people. We chatted with friends, enjoyed the lovely day, and got the makings for a truly local dinner -- fresh fish from local waters, vegetables, and strawberries for dessert (with whipped cream from a local dairy).

So often I have seen that people start out on a low-carb diet to lose weight, and then keep doing it for health...and then as time goes by they become more and more interested in the fresh ingredients which make up the bulk of our eating...where did they come from? How did they get to me? What's in them? How can I get the highest-quality ingredients?

There are so many reasons to find local sources for our food. It's better for our local economies, better for the environment...and we get the tastiest meals, to boot! To find local farmers near you, check out localharvest.org today!

Photo © Nancy Pepin-Vogt

Related Resources:

• Reasons to Eat Local from About.com's Local Food site
  
  
• Low-Carb Vegetable List
  
  
• Low-Carb Vegetable Recipes

On Mother's Day, usually kids and spouses think of feeding Mom some high carb treats. But what if Mom's body really does better without all the sugar and starch? In that case, what would really be special is give Mom treats which are healthy for her. Here are some delicious, low-carb ideas for Mother's Day - I guarantee you that the Mom in your life will remember your thoughtfulness. If you are a mom, print out this Low-Carb Mother’s Day page and place it strategically within the view of your loved ones. Bottom line requirement for Mother’s Day - enjoy each other. That’s the best gift of all!

Blueberry Coffee Cake Photo © Laura Dolson

Sample Mother’s Day Ideas:

• Blueberry (or Raspberry) Cream Cheese Coffee Cake
  
  
• Creating Egg Dishes (omelets, frittatas, etc)
  
  
• Low Carb Fruit List

Break out the sugar-free margaritas and guacamole! It’s Cinco de Mayo, the most celebrated Mexican holiday in the United States. I've collected a lot of low-carb resources together, and included features from About.com's Mexican, Cocktails, and Entertaining Guides in this guide to your Low-Carb Cinco de Mayo. Enjoy!

Photo © Skip O'Donnell

Related Resources:

• Eating Low Carb in a Mexican Restaurant
  
  
• Super-Easy Guacamole Recipe
  
  
• How to Make Fajitas

Spring is a great time to clean out, dust off, and rake away the debris that collects over the winter. It's also a good time to look at what we're doing for our health. Have we let some of our resolutions lose some of their resolve? Have we let some "trigger foods" into the house to sabotage our way of eating? Let's clean out the pantry, tune-up, and renew, starting today! Here's some help: Photo © Chris Leschinsky/Getty Images

• Clean Out the Pantry
  
  
• 7 Steps Towards Low-Carb Eating
  
  
• Easy Ways to Make Vegetables
  
  
• Rebooting a Low-Carb Diet

Photo © Chris Leschinsky/Getty Images

It's interesting to me how we're finding that many spices have unexpected effects in our bodies. It makes sense when you think about it, as we've always valued spices for the amount of flavor packed into a small package. Cinnamon is a great example, and may be especially good for those of us whose bodies don't handle sugar well. There is evidence that there are properties in cinnamon that lower insulin resistance and help stabilize blood glucose in diabetes. So let's find out more about the benefits of cinnamon.

Photo by Kim Martel

Cinnamon Recipes Resources:

• Instant Cinnamon Flax Cereal
  
  
• Chelsie's Cinnamon Cranberry Muffins
  
  
• Muffins that Taste Like Doughnuts
  
  
• Can Cinnamon Help Lower Blood Glucose? - From About.com's Diabetes Site

Did you know that two people can have the same height and weight, but very different percentages of body fat? We tend to think that "the scale tells the tale". But the truth is that some people may think they are overweight, when the amount of fat they have on their bodies is just fine, while others may carry hidden fat that the scale won't tell them about. Especially if you are losing weight, or exercising to gain muscle, it’s valuable to learn your body fat percentage.

Photo © Sharon Dominick

Related Resources:

• Body Fat Calculator
  
  
• Charts – Healthy Body Fat for Women and Men
  
  
• BMI (Body Mass Index) Calculator

We just got bad news about salmon here on the California Coast -- due to a collapse of the salmon population in our area, the commercial salmon season here has been called off for the year. Since I associate salmon very strongly with Spring, I'll continue to seek out wild Alaskan salmon, but I'm afraid it will go up quite a bit in price. This is a shame, becuase salmon is a true super food, with healthy fats, Vitamin D, protein, and other healthy nutrients. Are you a salmon lover? I have lots of great info for you:

• Salmon Nutrition Info, including Wild vs Farmed
  
  
• Salmon Selection and Cooking
  
  
• Dilled Grilled Salmon
  
  
• Easy Oven-Baked Salmon

Photo © Karen Struthers

You’d think low carbers would have an edge at Passover. After all, we don’t really go in for bread (leavened or not) at any time of the year, and we tend to make most of our dishes without flour. To a large extent, it's true that there are advantages to eating low carb at Passover. There are a couple of potential snags, and I try to help you get around them. I wish a joyful Low-Carb Passover to all who celebrate.

Photo © Simon Cataudo

Related Resources:

• Sugar-Free Macaroons
  
  
• Italian Almond Passover Cake
  
  
• Passover Recipes from Giora Shimoni, About.com's Guide to Kosher Food

What a great weekend I had in Phoenix at Nutrition and Metabolism Society Symposium which was part of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians 2008 Western Regional Obesity Course.

- We heard Gary Taubes, author of the tour-de-force book Good Calories, Bad Calories speak both days. The first day was about obesity - how we've come to believe what we do about the causes of obesity and why they don't hold up to scrutiny. For example, we're told "just to cut calories". And yet, to maintain weight, which in general our bodies do very well unless something goes wrong, requires an accuracy of better than .4 percent, which amounts to about 10-12 calories per day. Our bodies have hormonal and other signaling systems to make sure weight is regulated. The idea that we can consciously intervene in this system for years on end is a fool's errand.

- The next day Taubes did the same thing for low-fat diets in general and saturated fat in particular. As a science write tackling an issue, he likes to go back and ask the question, "How did we come to believe that...". By going back in history to when the issue was controversial, he can trace how the science evolved. In the case of fat, there was a distinct lack of science, and instead lots of opinions getting popular in the right place at the time (or, in this case, "wrong" place and time). The attitude was, "people are dying out there, and we don't have time to wait and prove that this is really true...we'll just recommend it anyway". Over the years, as more science has come in, the original ideas are going down, but the medical establishment moves slowly.

If you haven't read Gary's book yet, it is highly recommended, especially if you like lots of science and history.

- Dr. Richard Feinman had an engaging and fun gimmick for his talk, "Dietary Carbohydrate and Saturated Fat: What we Teach Medical Students". We each got a white wand with buttons (A through E), and he asked us the same multiple-choice questions he asks his medical students for this lecture. We clicked on what we thought were the answers, and then a bar graph of our guesses appeared on the screen at the front of the room. Then he told us the real answer and explained. (Example: The dietary component most likely to raise plasma triglycerides is: carbohydrates, protein, or fat. Correct answer: carbohydrates.) It was interesting to see the answers of this group of doctors.

- Dr. Jeff Volek talked about the interaction of dietary carbohydrate and fat metabolism. It turns out that the context of a low-carb vs high-carb diet may actually make a difference in the effects of saturated fat in the body and how fat in general is metabolized. For example, people on high-carb diets, make a lot more fat, much of it saturated, than people on low-carb diets. So even though people on low-carb diets eat more saturated fat (in general) they end up with less in their bodies. I plan to talk to Dr. Volek more about this and report back to you in the months to come.

- Dr. Bruce German, an expert on fats, asked the provocative question, "Did saturated fat evolve to kill 50-year old men?" He emphasized how much variation there is between individuals to fat (and other dietary components) and feels that this is the future of nutritional research and advice. He is very concerned that agriculture is moving too quickly to eliminate certain fats from our diets. Dr. German is another person that I will talk to more in the future.

- There were many other dynamic and interesting talks, and I hope to bring tell you more about them. But in addition to all the people speaking, we got to see a movie! This is a documentary called "My Big Fat Diet" about research that was conducted in Alert Bay, British Columbia. In that area, there is a big problem with diabetes and obesity among the First People (Native people) there. The idea was to put them back on a diet similar to the ancestral diet of those people - high in fat and very low in carbohydrates. The documentary follows them through a year on the diet and the wonderful results - people stopping medication, losing weight, normalizing blood glucose, and other positive changes. Dr. Wortman, the principle researcher, also spoke, and the filmmaker was on hand as well. More Information About the Documentary

The final verdict on saturated fat? One speaker put it this way: In a court of law, it would be ruled "not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" - the evidence is mixed but mostly that it is benign, and even the "bad" evidence shows it to be a very minor player in the risk factors for heart disease. This isn't to say that we don't still have a lot of learn about individual responses to saturated fat, how different saturated fats work in our bodies (coconut oil, anyone?), or how carbohydrates can modify the effects. There is still MUCH work to be done in this area!

Other highlights of the weekend for me personally:

- Chatting with Jackie Eberstein, who worked with Robert Atkins for 30 years, and hearing her moving reminiscences of him. We just recently passed the 5-year anniversary of the death of Dr. Atkins.

- Having a low-carb meal with likes of Mary Vernon, Gary Taubes, and Michael and Mary Dan Eades, and meeting so many interesting people -- scientists who are studying and thinking carefully about how our bodies work, physicians who are using carbohydrate restriction in their practices, and people working in many ways to get the word out about the health benefits of low-carb eating.

- Laughing (OK, and a little gossiping) with prolific blogger and podcaster Jimmy Moore and his wife Christine.

I'm already looking forward to next year!