Feedback—Your FAQs Answered

We use a lot sprouted breads and cannot find them in your database or books. Can you give us some information on how or if this affects GI numbers?

The only sprouted bread we can find that has been GI tested is Silver Hills Bakery’s Balanced bread (GI ±57) that was tested by Glycemic Index Laboratories in Toronto. Ron Donatelli who is involved in research and development at Silver Hills Bakery says: ‘We don’t used refined flour. With sprouted grain breads the entire grain is used making it a true “Whole Food” rather than refined flour where most all of the bran, germ and endosperm is stripped away for shelf life and stability. At Silver Hills Bakery we sprout the whole organic grain and mash it up in its entirety.’ Ron says that the bread is ‘soon to be available in the Pacific Northwest in most major grocery chains.’ Check their website for details: www.silverhillsbakery.com
‘Bread made from sprouted grains might well have a lower blood-glucose raising ability than bread made from normal flour’ says Jennie Brand-Miller and her co-authors in What Makes My Blood Glucose Go Up and Down? ‘Why’s that? When grains begin to sprout, carbohydrates stored in the grain are used as the fuel source for the new shoot. Chances are that the more readily available carbs stored in the wheat grain will be used up first, thereby reducing the amount of carbs in the final product. Furthermore, if the whole kernel form of the wheat grain is retained in the finished product, it will have the desired effect of lowering the blood glucose level. Physically limiting access of digestive enzymes to the starchy endosperm helps to reduce the rate of starch digestion.’
(Source: What Makes My Blood Glucose Go Up and Down?
USA: Marlowe & Company; UK: Vermilion; Taiwan: The Eurasian Publishing Group; Australia/New Zealand: Hachette Livre Australia)

Create an RSS News Feed for GI News
For those of you using Firefox [http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/start/] for your web browsing, there is a fantastic and free extension that can be added to the browser for creating easy access to what is known as ‘Really Simple Syndication’ or an RSS feed for short. RSS is a web standard for the delivery of news and other frequently updated content provided by websites. The extension that we recommend is called ‘Sage’. Sage not only gives you fast access to updates from our GI Newsletter as they occur on the first of every month but any of your favourite sites that support RSS can be added too. What’s more, Sage presents a summary of the new information in your browser window graphically.

To get started, you’ll need to download and install Sage [http://sage.mozdev.org/install/] while using Firefox. Once installed, quit Firefox and then restart to activate Sage. In the Tools menu, select Sage or just use the key-command Alt-S. A new Sage tab and column will appear on the left side of the browser window. Right-click in the top left frame and select New Bookmark. Give it a name (GI Newsletter for example) in the Name field and then paste the following address into the Location field:

http://feed.ginews.blogspot.com/atom.xml

That’s it! Now click on the new entry you created and a whole list of GI news entries will be generated in the lower left window frame. If you click on any of these entries, the corresponding story will appear in your browser window. Sage will automatically keep the list updated as new stories appear from GI News and any of your other favourite news sites.

Note: users of Mac OS 10.4 already have a similar feature built into the Safari web browser. Click on the blue RSS button in the right-hand side of the address bar when you are on the GI news site.

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