January 2015 GI News is published by the University of Sydney, School of Life and Environmental Sciences and the Charles Perkins Centre Publisher: Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, AM, PhD, FAIFST, FNSA Editor: Philippa Sandall Scientific Editor/Managing Editor: Alan Barclay, PhD Contact: ginewsfeedback@gmail.com Sydney University Glycemic Index Research Service Manager: Fiona Atkinson, PhD Contact: sugirs.manager@sydney.edu.au Food for Thought Nicole Senior takes a good look at the very large pink elephant in the room Let’s talk about alcohol – the very large pink elephant in the middle of the room that no one seems to be looking at. There’s endless talk about carbs being fattening and sugar being poison, but we don’t hear much about alcohol as a possible key contributor to obesity in adults. Considering Australian adults, for example, consume 4.3% of their daily kilojoules (calories) as alcohol, you have to wonder why the deafening silence. Perhaps because (arguably) alcohol is the most fun food/drink there is. It is, after all, the most popular recreational drug. Unlike sugar, however, alcohol actually is a poison, but like pretty much all poisons, the dose matters. A little might be OK, but a lot can kill you: either swiftly by accident or misadventure, or slowly and painfully from chronic disease. It is certainly thoroughly implicated in weight gain. Maybe we’re naive about the fattening nature of alcohol because we’re clueless about how many kilojoules/calories we’re downing with our favourite tipple. While packaged foods and non-alcoholic drinks must carry nutrition labelling including energy content, alcoholic drinks do not. And not surprisingly, the alcohol industry is dead against placing this very sobering information on their products. Let’s look at the basic numbers: While carbohydrate contains 4 calories (16kJ) per gram and protein contains 4.2 (17kJ) calories per gram, alcohol contains 7 calories (29kJ) per gram. A standard drink contains 10 grams of alcohol in Australia, so you have 70 calories (290kJ) in the glass even before you consider the calories/kilojoules from any other ingredients such as the sugar in mixers, or cream in cocktails.

The body has no ability to store alcohol as it does for carbohydrate, protein and fat, so alcohol must be metabolised immediately. And because alcohol is so high in calories/kilojoules, much of the food eaten with it is highly likely to be surplus to requirements. On top of this, being tipsy tends to make us more relaxed about what we eat, and alcohol is a well known appetite stimulant. A fortified wine before dinner is called an aperitif (French, meaning “to open”) and is served to stimulate the appetite. And while the low-carb and sugar-free folk warn against about sugar content of drinks, and low-carb beer grabs a growing slice of the market, the numbers tell a different story. Most of the calories/kilojoules in alcoholic drinks come from the alcohol, not the sugar. Low-alcohol beer trumps low-carb beer when it comes to being weight friendly, and for staying in better control of how much and what kinds of food you eat with your drink. Let’s look at the numbers The percentages don’t add up to 100% because there are also starches present that contribute total energy. Multiply calories by 4.2 to convert to kilojoules.

Cocktail and Ingredients

Measures Total Calories (Kilojoules)

Calories from sugar

Calories from alcohol

Regular beer (lager) 9½oz (285ml)

105 (433kJ)

2 (2%)

74 (71%)

White wine (medium) 3½oz (100ml)

65 (270kJ)

4 (7%)

55 (85%)

Mojito White rum Lime juice Sugar syrup Fresh mint Soda water

1⅔oz (50ml) ¾oz (25ml) ⅔oz (20ml) 8 leaves 1oz (30ml)

150 (630kJ)

44 (29%)

105 (68%)

Daiquiri White rum Lime juice Sugar syrup

1⅔oz (50ml) ¾oz (25ml) ⅔oz (20ml)

150 (630kJ)

44 (29%) 105 (68%)

Margarita Silver tequila Cointreau Lime juice

1⅓oz (40ml) ⅔oz (20ml) ⅔oz (20ml)

155 (650kJ)

20 (13%)

133 (84%)

Dry Martini Vodka or gin Dry vermouth

2oz (60ml) 1 tsp (5ml)

130 (540kJ)

0.4 (0.3%)

126 (98%)

Manhattan American rye whiskey Sweet vermouth Angostura bitters

1⅓oz 40ml ⅔oz (20ml) 2 dashes

131 (550kJ)

1.2 (1%)

126 (93%)

Reproduced and adapted with permission from The Ultimate Guide to Sugars and Sweeteners .

I won’t go into the cultural problem we have with consuming way too much alcohol here, or the health and social costs, except to say they are MAMMOTH. It costs us as a society a lot to drink so much. I love a nice glass of wine or beer, but it would be good to be part of a culture that doesn’t pressure people to drink or encourage drunkenness in order to fit in. Fighting excessive alcohol consumption is a fight worth having, with no nutritional downsides. So let’s quit the one-nutrient-at-a-time skirmishing and take on a real enemy. Let’s do battle (big guns and all) to have the calories/kilojoules clearly printed in at least 10 point type on the label of all alcoholic drinks. Nicole Senior is an Accredited Nutritionist, author and consultant who strives to make healthy food taste terrific. Her books include Eat to Beat Cholesterol, Belly Busting for Blokes, and Food Myths. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook or checkout her website

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• www.nicolesenior.com.au News Brief Is breakfast necessary? It’s become dietary dogma that you’ve gotta have breakfast before heading off for the day. But to put it in perspective: it is just the meal that breaks your overnight fast and there are no fixed rules about having it first thing. It’s also worth keeping in mind that our hunter-gatherer ancestors are very unlikely to have had breakfast first thing – from a human evolution perspective, tucking into three meals plus snacks a day is abnormal. Recent studies reveal numerous health benefits of going hungry for a while. In PNAS David Allison and colleagues report that “energy restriction periods of as little as 16 hours can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes. The mechanisms involve a metabolic shift to fat metabolism and ketone production, and stimulation of adaptive cellular stress responses that prevent and repair molecular damage.” (Sorry, there’s a pay wall to get the whole piece.) However, there are real benefits to eating breakfast. It kickstarts your metabolism, gives you energy to power your day, and is a great way to get a goodly proportion of the fruit and fibre for long-term health and wellbeing. There are extra benefits if you have diabetes. Eating breakfast helps to stabilise blood glucose levels. The longer you wait to break the fast, the more insulin resistant you may become. This means that whatever you eat next will require an elevated insulin response, making life harder for your beta cells and probably resulting in an elevated blood glucose reading. What about breakfast and brain power? Parents worry when the kids skip breakfast and dash out the door to school. There’s certainly a significant body of research showing that breakfast eaters (especially low GI ones) tend to outperform skippers in the classroom and we have reported on this in GI News over the years. Simon Cooper’s long been involved in this research. His latest study in Physiology & Behavior suggests that: “the combined effects of breakfast GI and exercise in adolescents depend upon the component of cognitive function examined. A low GI breakfast and mid-morning bout of exercise were individually

beneficial for response times on the Sternberg paradigm, whereas they conferred additional benefits for response times on the Stroop test.” What about weight loss? A recent randomized controlled trial in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that contrary to popular opinion, it didn’t make any discernible difference whether or not participants ate breakfast. Both the regular skippers and the regular breakfast eaters who completed the trial lost weight. We all choose muesli for breakfast here. Jennie has hers with half a banana and sliced orange with lots of pith; Philippa has muesli with half a banana, blueberries and raspberries, a dash of milk and a dollop of Greek yoghurt; for Alan, it’s muesli and a handful of almonds – raw or toasted – and half a grapefruit (winter) or a couple of pieces of stone fruit (summer) topped off with UT Plus or Kellogg’s Sustain for variety, plus half a canned peach and soy milk and Jalna low fat vanilla yoghurt. Creatures of habit, we tend to buy our favourite brands of muesli, but if you want to make your own, here’s Anneka Manning’s recipe for Toasted Almond and Blueberry Muesli.

Photo: Georgie Esdaile Perspectives with Dr Alan Barclay What are quality carbs? Carbohydrate is the macronutrient currently under the spotlight as health professionals look for reasons why rates of overweight, obesity and type 2 diabetes continue to rise around the globe in both developed and developing nations. Many popular diet book writers, and even some scientists, are advising people to severely limit or even avoid carbs and eat more fat and protein. Will this make a difference? Probably not. Here at GI News, we don’t believe the one-nutrient-at-a time approach will solve anything. However, we do believe in making the best possible food choices. So, let’s start off by looking at overall eating patterns. There’s more than one. Many more in fact including higher fat, lower carbohydrate (but not low) diets like the Mediterranean diet, or high carbohydrate lower fat diets like Okinawan diet. Both these eating patterns are associated with a longer life and decreased risk of chronic disease. Fruits, vegetables, legumes and cereal grains are important foods in these diets as well. On top of this, how you choose to eat depends on many lifestyle factors including your cultural background, your personal food preferences, and your religious beliefs, plus food availability and price, and let’s not forget or underestimate your (or your partner’s) culinary skills.

You don’t have to stick with one particular eating pattern either. If you are lucky enough to live in a country with a bountiful range of foods (and restaurants) from all around the world, and you have the money to pay, you can enjoy different cuisines on different days of the week. Enjoying a wide range of nutritious foods is one of the typical dietary guidelines from around the world, and it is also one of life’s great pleasures. If you do choose to include carb-rich foods in your daily fare, choose the nutritious “quality” options most of the time and save the less nutritious picks for genuine special occasions (just as you would do with protein-rich and fat-rich foods). What are the quality carbohydrate options? They are the whole foods and minimally processed foods you will find in the produce aisles such as fruit, starchy vegetables, wholegrain cereals, and legumes (beans, lentils and chickpeas). These staples come with so much more than carbohydrate. They provide us with the vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals and fibre we need to be healthy and regular, and their micronutrients protect us from chronic disease. These “quality” carbs have long been the plant food staples providing energy, sustenance and health for millions of people around the world. And you just can’t replace the nutritional goodies they naturally bring with a pill, as Prof Walter Willett Chairman, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health reminds us. “So far, no one has found a magic bullet that works against heart disease, cancer and a host of other chronic diseases as well as fruits and vegetables seem to do,” he says. “In theory, one could cram all the good things that plants make – essential elements, fibre, vitamins, antioxidants, plant hormones, and so on – into a pill. But it would have to be a very large pill. And no one can honestly say what should go into such a pill – or in what proportions. The benefits of eating fruits and vegetables probably come from combinations of compounds that work together.” Moving on to packaged foods ... Assessing carbohydrate quality in the food industry’s refined and processed foods is not so easy. And, unfortunately, there is no single measure of their carbohydrate quality so far, such as looking for a star or avoiding foods with “added sugars”. You need to take a range of factors into account when you put these foods into your shopping trolley. Let’s get the ball rolling and take a look at what carbohydrates actually are. The simplest form of carbohydrate is a sweet-tasting single-sugar molecule called a monosaccharide. There are three main monosaccharides in foods and drinks – fructose, galactose and glucose. Two sugar molecules joined together are known as disaccharides, and the most common forms in foods and drinks are lactose, maltose and sucrose. Larger chains of 3–9 sugar molecules are known as oligosaccharides, and the most common form found in foods are maltodextrins. Long chains (10 or more) of sugars are known as starches, and there are 2 main types – amylose, which contains mostly long straight chains like pieces of string, and amylopectin, which contains lots of branched chains, like a tree. Finally, most forms of dietary fibre are also made up of long chains of sugars, but they are joined up in ways that prevent our body’s digestive juices from breaking them down.

In Part 2, February GI News, we will look at the carbohydrates in refined and processed foods and what you will find on the food label (and how to make some sense of it) – plus what we think should be added to food labels to help consumers choose quality carbs.

Alan Barclay PhD is a consultant dietitian and Chief Scientific Officer at the Glycemic Index Foundation. He worked for Diabetes Australia (NSW) from 1998-2014 and is a member of the editorial boards of Diabetes Australia’s consumer magazine, Conquest, and health professional magazine, Diabetes Management Journal. He is coauthor of The Low GI Diet: Diabetes Handbook, The Low GI Diet: Managing Type 2 Diabetes, and The Ultimate Guide to Sugars and Sweeteners. Contact: alan.barclay@gisymbol.com Putting Fun into Fitness with Emma Sandall Ballet barre Ballet barre fitness programs are very popular these days, especially with women. I spoke with Renee Scott, founder of Barre Attack about the benefits of these programs and how and why she devised her own method. Renee owns Balance Moves Pilates and Barre Studio in the heart of Bondi and travels all around Australia training Pilates, dance and fitness instructors in the Barre Attack method. Emma: How would you describe a fitness focused ballet barre and what are its benefits? Renee: It's the new “in” thing. Barre Attack has taught over 300 instructors around Australia now. Nearly all of them are qualified in Pilates and/or dance, so a fitness focused ballet barre really combines key elements from Pilates, dance and of course fitness. I designed Barre Attack with the goal of giving clients “sexy body confidence” – it can help with posture, flexibility, balance, bone density, core stability and functional fitness patterns. Plus, it’s fun. Emma: Is it exclusive to women, or can men enjoy it too? Renee: Barre Attack is definitely more popular with women, but it’s certainly not exclusive and we do see men occasionally. Plenty of guys try it thinking it will be easy and half way through you see that reality is sinking in and they’re starting to hurt. But the guys get it and the ones that stick with it have let me know that they feel better in the gym – lifting heavier weights with greater control and endurance. It’s not unusual for a woman to bring along a partner. Let’s face it, if you want your man to get into shape, Barre Attack will help things along nicely. If there are a couple of guys in the class, I tend to avoid giving some of the more dance-y, feminine moves, but not always.

Emma: What can you expect from a Barre Attack class? Renee: Barre Attack is done to music, it’s nonstop. You can expect a full body workout. The actual theme of the class can vary but expect to complete several standing stability exercises using the barre and hearing things like first position, second position and plié, your butt will thank you for it. We also include cardio intervals, Pilates balls and resistance bands to vary and challenge the workout. We advise everyone to drink plenty of water and bring a towel. Emma: What different methods of training influenced Barre Attack? Renee: I grew up with Ballet, it was my passion. I enjoyed the music, the movement, the creativity. My time with the Hamburg Ballet gave me wonderful experience and there is no doubt that this has been a big influence on Barre Attack. After ballet my passion stayed with movement and I moved to New York to work with one of the original disciples of Joseph Pilates, Romana Kryzanowska. The original Pilates method emphasised controlled movement but was strong and athletic. I've designed Barre Attack to build on this with elements of Ballet and interval training. Fundamentally Barre Attack uses the standing stability of ballet, the control and posture alignment of Pilates and the cardiovascular fitness from interval training. Emma: What are the differences between your ballet barre method and others like Barre Extend and Barre Body? Renee: All have advantages. Some are very focused on ballet, some are very focused on yoga. With Barre Attack I wanted to appeal to all ages and levels and I wanted to ensure that people didn't need prior ballet experience to enjoy a class. Having danced with some of the top European ballet schools and trained in Pilates with some of the of the original Pilates disciples I wanted to create something that wasn't just a fad, that was a workout that achieved true results. As part of the development process, I worked with physiotherapists and exercise physiologists to ensure Barre Attack was the best it could be – safe and efficient. I was really happy when both the Australian Pilates Method Association and Fitness Australia both recognised the quality of the program by awarding CECs (continuing education credits) to all instructors who complete the course.

Emma Sandall is an ex-ballerina turned fitness and health guru. She teaches and coaches dance, fitness and Pilates and writes. Nicole Senior’s Taste of Health Having a crush on garlic What’s your most indispensible kitchen gadget? Mine is a garlic crush, and it must be well designed because I use it so much and I don’t want to end up with repetitive strain injury! I

love garlic, and so does most of the world apparently. I’m hard pressed to think of a cuisine that doesn’t use it. It is an almost universal flavouring ingredient.

Garlic, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. An Italian classic is rubbing a freshly cut clove of garlic over a slice of crusty bread or toast and then drizzling with olive oil. Similarly, rub cut garlic around the inside of your salad bowl and the flavour will carry right through when you toss the leaves with dressing. You can make classic garlic bread with a healthy twist by slicing a wholegrain sourdough baguette and spreading crushed garlic mixed with olive oil or trans-free margarine spread in the slices before baking in foil. A simple sauce for pasta is crushed garlic, finely chopped continental parsley, olive oil and grated parmesan. Garlic prawns (shrimp) are supremely delicious, especially soaking up the garlicky olive oil left in the bottom with crusty bread. Lebanese garlic chicken is barbecue chicken served with a garlic purée sauce and delivers an eye-watering hit as addictive as extreme sports. The new kid on the garlic block raking in praise from top chefs is black garlic made by slowly heating heads of garlic over several weeks to turn it black and create caramelised (sweet) flavours. Ian ‘Herbie’ Hemphill is a font of knowledge about garlic in the latest edition of his Spice and Herb Bible. He tells us that garlic is among the oldest of cultivated plants and several bulbs were found in the tome of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankamun dating from 1358 BCE. Ian says garlic can be used in “practically every savoury dish imaginable” and has a special culinary affinity with bay leaf, coriander, chives, curry leaf, fennel, oregano, parsley, pepper, rosemary, sage, thyme and Vietnamese mint. There are also recipes in the book from Ian’s daughter Kate including her Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic (!) that I can’t wait to try. Garlic’s been used for its therapeutic properties for thousands of years. There’s a load of garlic soup recipes from all corners of the globe with supporting folklore that says it will cure what ails you. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates prescribed it for respiratory problems, internal parasites and fatigue, and it was given to ancient Olympic athletes to boost performance. In ancient India, it was used as an aphrodisiac. Garlic juice was used as an antiseptic on wounds during the First World War. And recent studies show garlic has antibiotic effects against intestinal infection with campylobacter. These days many people take garlic capsules to benefit their heart and circulatory system, or to prevent cancer. Although the jury is still out on this, there is modest evidence in support. Garlic (Allium sativum) is rich in sulphur compounds called allyl sulphides which are thought to help prevent cancer by breaking down and eliminating carcinogens form the body. Garlic

also contains dietary fibre and some phenolic antioxidants as well as small amounts of vitamin C, B6, manganese and selenium. Studies suggest that eating garlic regularly can reduce the risk of blood clots, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. It’s the sulphur compounds in garlic that are responsible for ‘garlic breath’. Their breakdown products are excreted in the breath and sweat. Scientists at Ohio State University found the best things to do are: to eat garlic with lemon; eat an apple; or drink green tea afterwards. Herbie says chewing on a few fennel seeds or fresh parsley leaves can help, and he also says garlic breath is less of a problem when everyone is eating garlic! Fresh heads of garlic are best stored intact in an open container in a cool, dry, dark place (not in the fridge). Separating the cloves will reduce the flavour. Garlic stored too long, or in a moist environment will start to sprout and you can plant it straight into a new plant for a pot or garden - ensure you keep part of the base plate and plant this pointing downwards. Garlic plants love manure and compost enriched soil. Store your crop in a cool, dry place: you can thread them together into a bunch and hang them up out of the way (just like the Continental delis do it). And there’s more. See our new column called ‘What I eat?’ This month it’s all about Egyptian cuisine – garlic is essential says guest writer Hanan Saleh. And of course, check out our recipes: Anneka Manning’s delicious roasted garlic and Johanna Burani’s Sicilian garlic sauce.

Nicole Senior is an Accredited Nutritionist, author and consultant who strives to make healthy food taste terrific. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook or checkout her website What I Eat Hanan Saleh’s typical Egyptian menu A typical Egyptian menu always features garlic says guest writer Hanan Saleh, Sydney-based pediatric dietitian and mother of two and Nicole Senior’s first guest contributor to our new regular feature, where we explore traditional cuisines, find new ways to make healthy foods delicious, expand our cooking repertoire, and discover new taste sensations. “My parents are Egyptian, born and raised in Cairo. They migrated to Sydney Australia in 1973. I grew up with my mother’s amazing Egyptian cooking including the popular falafel and mahshi (stuffed vine leaves or zucchini/courgette) and koshari (rice, pasta, lentils and fried onions with an amazing spicy sauce). I’m biased of course, but I think she makes the best in Sydney. Nicole: What does a typical day’s food look like?

Hanan: Egyptians like to have the main meal in the middle of the day and have a light dinner. Here’s what it looks like:

• Breakfast: Ful meddemas (stewed and mashed fava beans drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice, cumin, salt, pepper), usually served on weekends as it takes time to prep but it’s simply divine; eggs, home-made bread, tahina (sesame seed paste), hummus, olives

• Lunch (heavy meal): One, or a combination of, vine leaves, koshari, molokhia soup (jute leaves, corchorus olitorius) with rice, boofteek (veal schnitzel), samak maklee (fried fish). All time consuming dishes but very yummy (and fatty)

• Dinner (light meal): Fruit salad and sandwich with leftover meat or chicken and salad

• Snacks: Koonafa (pastry with crushed nuts drizzled with a sugar based syrup), halawa (or halva: nougat with tahina and crushed nuts) or fresh fruits (usually in large portions)

• Drinks: Tea, usually black and loose leaf and sweet – some people add cinnamon sticks

Nicole: What are three ingredients Egyptian cuisine couldn’t do without? Hanan: Garlic, coriander and rice. Nicole: What is the “hero ingredient” of Egyptian cuisine? Hanan: It would have to be garlic – it’s in absolutely everything Egyptian!

Hanan Saleh is a Sydney-based paediatric dietitian. She provides home visits to mums and bubs of all ages and with a variety of clinical conditions, as well as consultations with Sydney pediatricians.

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• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thefoodexpert?fref=ts Anneka Manning’s Family Baking. Roasted garlic Roasting has a wonderful affect on garlic – taking away its strong pungent aroma and flavour, replacing it with a subtle, gentler, sweet nuttiness. Once roasted, squeeze the delicious flesh from the skins and use whole or mash and use as a puree. It is delicious served spread on bread and toast, used in stews and casseroles in place of raw garlic, tossed through pasta, served alongside barbecued meats and chicken, and used to season homemade tomato sauces.

Makes: 6 bulbs Preparation time: 5 minutes Baking time: 1 hour 6 bulbs of garlic 2½ tsp extra virgin olive oil 2 sprigs rosemary or 6 sprigs of thyme Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F (180°C/350°F fan-forced). Cut about 1cm (½in) off the tops off the garlic bulbs to expose the garlic clove flesh inside. Remove any excess papery outer layers of the garlic bulb. Place them in a small shallow ovenproof dish and drizzle with the olive oil. Sprinkle with the rosemary or thyme leaves and then season with pepper. Cover the dish with foil and bake in preheated oven for 1 hour or until the garlic is aromatic and tender when pierced with a skewer. Use the bulbs warm, or cool to room temperature before squeezing the fleshy cloves from their skins and using whole or mashing with a fork to use as a spread or a seasoning. Baker’s tip The roasted garlic cloves will keep in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days. Serving 155 kJ/ 37 calories • 1g protein; 2.5g fat (includes 0.4g saturated fat; saturated:unsaturated fat ratio 0.2) • 2g available carbs (includes 0.5g sugars and 1.5g starch); • 3g fibre • sodium:potassium ratio 0.03

Anneka Manning, founder of BakeClub, shares her delicious better-for-you recipes for snacks, desserts and treats the whole family will love. Through both her writing and cooking

school, Anneka teaches home cooks to bake in practical and approachable yet inspiring ways that assure success in the kitchen. In 2015 she is offering a wide range of classes including healthy Kids Lunchboxes, Savoury Baking and Gluten-free Baking. You can find out more about them HERE. What’s for dinner with Dr Joanna Lean and mean turf burritos With three males in the house I'm always looking for inspiring dinners that satisfy all our tastes. Burritos are one of those meals. I can add extra salad, my partner likes extra meat and my boys fight over extra cheese. But making our own is all part of the fun. Put all the ingredients in the middle of the table and tuck in! You can use red kidney beans if you can't find black beans). Makes 8 (two burritos each).

300g (10oz) lean beef, lamb, pork or veal mince (a mixture of two meats works really well) ½ carrot, peeled and diced ½ stick of celery, diced 2 spring onions (shallots/green onions), finely chopped ¼ green capsicum (bell pepper), diced 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely diced 2 tsp smoked paprika splash red wine 2 tbsp tomato paste (salt reduced) splash red wine To serve ½ avocado, mashed with lemon juice and freshly ground black pepper 1 small cos lettuce, washed and pulled apart into individual leaves tomato salsa (homemade or shop bought) ½ cup thick natural yoghurt ½ cup grated mature cheddar cheese 8 wholegrain tortillas, warmed Heat a large non-stick frypan and brown the meat. Stir in the carrot, celery, spring onion, capsicum, garlic, and smoked paprika. Heat until just bubbling, then reduce the heat to low and let it simmer, uncovered, for about 45 minutes. Add the beans, tomato paste and splash of red wine (you can use water or stock instead) and simmer for a further 10 minutes.

Serve in the middle of the table with separate bowls of the mashed avocado, lettuce, salsa, grated cheese, yoghurt and warmed tortillas for everyone to make up their own burrito. Per serve (2 burritos) 435 calories/1830kJ • 35g protein • 18g fat (7g saturated fat; saturated:unsaturated fat ratio 0.4) • 30g available carbohydrate • 9g fibre Joanna McMillan PhD is a qualified dietitian and nutritionist. She is director of nutrition consultancy company Dr Joanna, and founder of Get Lean – the online healthy lifestyle system. She is a popular media spokesperson in Australia with regular TV and radio appearances, writes for several magazines and blogs, and has authored several books including The Low GI Diet (with Prof Jennie Brand-Miller). Joanna is a proud ambassador for Diabetes Australia and The Skin and Cancer Foundation. She is also a former fitness instructor and continuing exercise enthusiast which she juggles with being mum to two very energetic boys. Find out more at her website: Dr Joanna. Johanna Burani’s Italian Kitchen Agliata (Sicilian garlic sauce) Italians love garlic and use it ubiquitously in both their daily and festive dishes. It is a friendly “team player,” enhancing the innate flavors of its companion ingredients, especially lemon, olive oil, tomatoes and vinegar. Here is a go-to recipe to use with boiled meat, fried fish, vegetables, crostini and pasta. Behind its simplicity lies a genuine melding of flavors impossible to surpass! Servings: 8 (2 tablespoons/30 ml each) 4 large, unpeeled garlic cloves (24g) ½ cup (125ml) extra virgin olive oil ½ cup (125ml) white wine vinegar Crush the garlic cloves with a heavy chef’s knife or cleaver. Set aside. Heat the oil in a small pot over medium–low flame for 1 minute. Add the garlic and gently brown in the hot oil for 5 minutes, adjusting the heat to avoid burning the garlic. Carefully add the vinegar. Cook another 2 minutes. Cool Strain and store in a glass jar (tinted if possible). There’s no steadfast rule to follow for storing the agliata. I keep mine in the fridge up to a month and bring it to room temperature before use. The oil and vinegar will separate, so mix well before using. Per serve 2 tablespoons (30ml) 556kJ/133 calories • less than 1g protein • 14g fat (includes 2g saturated fat; saturated:unsaturated fat ratio 0.2) • 1g available carbs • 0.5g fibre •

American dietitian and author of the best-selling Good Carbs, Bad Carbs, Johanna Burani, shares her favourite recipes with a low or moderate GI. For more information, check out Johanna's website. The photographs are by Sergio Burani. His food, travel and wine photography website is photosbysergio.com. Glycemic Index Foundation News Get into shape with the Total Wellbeing Diet online The GI Foundation has teamed up with the CSIRO to provide the new, personalised 12-week on-line Total Wellbeing Diet weight-loss program that includes a wide range of low GI carbohydrate foods and meals to help you manage hunger and cravings. I caught up with Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, President of the Glycemic Index Foundation, who had this to say about the program: “This new and improved Total Wellbeing Diet takes the glycemic index seriously, building on research undertaken by CSIRO and the Glycemic Index Foundation. It gives you the best diet for long-term, sustainable weight control and wellbeing by helping you make smarter choices.” I have been trialling the program myself and I am really enjoying the diet, exercise and weight trackers with no calorie counting. That’s right, rather than counting calories, a food diary tallies your food groups and guides you to healthier eating. It has definitely showed me which food groups I am not getting enough of and those I need to cut back on – those indulgences creep up. The 12-week program is easy to follow and can be customised to suit your tastes, dietary preferences and lifestyle. When you sign up, you will be able to access more than 1,000 recipes suitable for all the family. The cost is AUD$149.00. The CSIRO’S original Total Wellbeing Diet was created after evidence from numerous international clinical trials showed that a higher protein diet was more effective in both producing weight loss and improving risk factors for diabetes and heart disease than a higher carbohydrate diet. While the Diogenes study has shown that incorporating low GI carbohydrate foods along with higher protein assists with maintaining that weight loss. I am up to Week 5, which included poached egg on toast for breakfast. I have always liked this recipe from our GI Symbol friends at Bürgen® so added it as one of my combos.To sign up for the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet online program visit: www.totalwellbeingdiet.com Good luck – Dianna Crisp Breakfast toast with egg and avocado salsa Serves 2 ½ avocado, peeled and cubed 1 roma tomato, seeded and finely diced 1 tbsp lime juice 1 tbsp finely diced coriander (cilantro) 2 tsp sweet chilli sauce 2 poached eggs 2 slices Burgen Soy-Lin (or a similar dense Soy-Lin bread), toasted

To make the salsa: combine avocado, tomato, lime juice and coriander in a small bowl and mix lightly. Serve salsa with a poached egg, toast and a drizzle of sweet chilli sauce. Dianna Crisp is the Communications and Partnership Manager at the Glycemic Index Foundation, a not-for-profit, health promotions charity.

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Q&A with Jennie Brand-Miller Many of the studies you write about in GI News talk about “insulin resistance” and “insulin sensitivity”. Can you explain these terms in a really simple way? Insulin is a hormone that plays several critical roles in our health and wellbeing. It’s been called the master hormone because it regulates so many things, including our blood glucose levels. When we eat carbohydrate-rich foods like bread, breakfast cereals, pasta, rice or noodles, or starchy vegetables like potatoes and fruit, our body converts them into a glucose (a sugar) that is absorbed from the intestine and becomes the main fuel that circulates in our blood. When glucose levels in the blood rise after a meal, the beta cells in the pancreas move insulin out into the bloodstream to drive the glucose into the cells so it can be put to work either as an immediate source of energy or converted to glycogen (a stored energy source), or to fat. You are what’s called ‘insulin sensitive’ – a good thing – if you require relatively little insulin to process your BGLs (blood glucose levels). On the other hand, if your body needs to secrete a lot of insulin into the blood, you have “insulin resistance”. I sometimes describe it as your body being “partially deaf”, to insulin. Think of it like this: just as we may shout to make a deaf person hear, the body needs to make more insulin in an effort to drive glucose where it’s supposed to go. So moving glucose from the blood into cells necessitates the release of large amounts of insulin. How can you optimise your insulin sensitivity and decrease insulin levels over the whole day? A healthy low GI diet plus physical activity are the most powerful ways to do this, as numerous studies have shown. The Diogenes study looked at the effects of diets with different protein content and glycemic index on prevention of weight re-gain in overweight adults New England Journal of Medicine and found that an “increase in dietary protein and a reduction in GI content over a 6-month ad libitum [that just means free living and making your own food choices] dietary intervention are related to a lower drop-out rate and

produced favourable effects on glycemic control and insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese subjects after an initial body-weight loss.” So this is a really good question and one we are asked about so often, we included a chapter on it in our revised edition of Low GI Diet for Managing Type 2 Diabetes.

Professor Jennie Brand-Miller (AM, PhD, FAIFST, FNSA, MAICD) is an internationally recognised authority on carbohydrates and the glycemic index with over 250 scientific publications. She holds a Personal Chair in Human Nutrition in the Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise and Eating Disorders and Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. She is the co-author of many books for the consumer on the glycemic index and health. COPYRIGHT AND PERMISSION This website and all information, data, documents, pages and images it contains is copyright under the Copyright Act 1968 (Commonwealth of Australia) (as amended) and the copyright laws of all member countries of the Berne Union and the Universal Copyright Convention. Copyright in the website and in material prepared by GI News is owned by University of Sydney, School of Life and Environmental Sciences and the Charles Perkins Centre. Copyright in quotations, images from published works and photo libraries, and materials contributed by third parties including our regular contributors Alan Barclay, Jennie Brand-Miller, Nick Fuller, and Nicole Senior is owned by the respective authors or agencies, as credited. GI News encourages the availability, dissemination and exchange of public information. You may include a link to GI News on your website. You may also copy, distribute, display, download and otherwise freely deal only with material owned by GI News, on the condition that you include the copyright notice “© GI News, University of Sydney, School of Life and Environmental Sciences and the Charles Perkins Centre” on all uses and prominently credit the source as being GI News and include a link back to www.gisymbol.com/gi-news. You must, however, obtain permission from GI News if you wish to do the following: charge others for access to the work; include all or part of the work in advertising or a product for sale, or; modify the work. To obtain such permission, please contact ginewsfeedback@gmail.com. This permission does not extend to material contributed and owned by other parties. We strongly recommend that you refer to the copyright statements at their respective websites and seek their permission before making use of any such material, whether images or text. Please contact GI News if you are in doubt as to the ownership of any material.

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