Day 243

30th August 2016 |Debbie Wattis |No Comments

Tuesday 30th August 2016

I find shopping for food I can eat is becoming a lot easier. Most of the food I buy is fresh so that is easy. I know what meat and vegetables to pick now organic is better.

I have now changed the way I make certain things. I am getting I nice collection of healthy recipes now.

But when it comes to reading packets it has taken me a little longer to grasp. I have to keep asking Jenny what to look for.

This is what she says-

When looking at food labels for carbohydrate levels you want to look at the 100g as that gives you an equal comparison to other foods

On this example ideally the carbohydrate level needs to be under 60g per 100g for a reasonable level of energy from carbohydrate based food, which I would call a starchy carb

Look at the sugar levels underneath, aiming for no more than 20%, so this example is 3.8g of 45g, so that’s good at about 10%.

Then with the fibre -this level helps to reduce the impacts of the sugar, so the higher the better! This level is quite low at 2.8g compared to 45g of carbohydrates. As a comparison spinach has 3.6g of carbohydrate per 100g, of which 2.6g of that is fibre – superfood!!

Finally the protein levels – so if over 3g this has a reasonable level of protein so would use this protein element as the main element of the meal. As an example eggs are 10grams of protein per 100g and fish is 22g. Ideally you need 1g of protein per kg of your muscle mass,

So Debbie has approx 50kg of muscle mass, the 3 meals per day will equal a total of 50grams of protein per day, which is approx 16-18grams of protein per meal.

In summary you’re ideally looking for mid carb, less than 60g per 100g, with low sugars and high fibre, >5g is good.

Or high fat, over 20g per 100g, low carb = low sugars & fibre.

Or then high protein, over 10g per 100g, low carb sugar, fibre.

The trick is to pick one main macronutrients, carb, fat or protein as the main element of each meal and accompany with greens salad/leafs (leafy carb) = low carb and high fibre foods..