Whatsa Matter For You? Offending My Ancestors, One Food Group at a Time

There's a rule for members of the media known as the Equal Time Rule. Basically, one has to give equal air time to opposing political candidates so that the public does not receive incomplete or biased information that may influence the results of an election. As a new member of this social media forum known as blogging, I seek to honor that rule in today's post by following up my assault on Irish food by criticizing more of my ancestors in a rebuttal attack on Italian food.* I feel this is critical to ensure that a) everyone knows that I do not love my Italian ancestors more than my Irish ancestors and b) there will not be some Occupy Potato Fields movement that leads to an American version of the great Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, which, incidentally is how my people came here in the first place. Which, also, incidentally, was not caused by an Occupy movement.

Do you remember how whenever your parents punished you as a kid they assured you that it would hurt them more than it hurt you? At the time, it seemed like a bunch of crock, but allow me to preface my critique of Italian food with that same adage. There is hardly a food more painful for me to criticize than Italian food. Some of my fondest memories revolve around foods like spaghetti, meatballs and chicken cutlets that my Mom learned to make from her grandfather, and the pizza joint that my family had a standing reservation at on Saturday nights until the owners divorced and Stella's shut down before consulting us. There has hardly been a darker day in our family chronicles than that Saturday at 4:00 p.m. when we pulled into the parking lot and found that we would not be getting our two 18" cheese pizzas and order of garlic knots anymore. Like war-torn refugees, we had to search for another pizza place to call home. Even now, I get emotional when I drive by where Stella's used to be. (Stops writing to recover)

Believe me, I am not here to criticize the Italians on flavor, but to let you know that your body may have a less idealistic view of your Italian food than your brain does. Most Italian foods, at least from the group I just mentioned, have one thing (other than amazing taste) in common: a sky-high glycemic load that will send your blood sugar hitting rock bottom faster than a Mob boss can make you sleep with the fishes. Consider these facts: just one cup of pasta has a glycemic load of 21, and a slice of pizza has a glycemic load of 20. You want your entire meal to have a glycemic load of 20--tops--and under 11 if you're serious about losing weight. Once again, I'm going to propose that Snickers (GL of 21) replace spaghetti as the perfect pairing with meatballs.


And in case you're not up to speed on how glycemic load (GL) works, you need to know that  every time you comply with an Italian's cry of "Mangia! Mangia!" --that's, "Eat! Eat!" for those of you who didn't have a great-grandfather telling you that at family dinners--you are increasing the GL and the consequent blood sugar impact on your body.  If a little old lady who looks like Tomie dePaola's Strega Nona just heaped a few ladles full of pasta on your plate, there's a good chance that your one cup serving just turned into four or five cups, causing the GL to increase by just that much! You could seriously end up eating 105 GL worth of pasta at one sitting. (If you do the math, 21x5=sugar coma.)  At that point, you should have just had a box of donuts for a relatively modest GL of 92. (Insert sarcasm font here) I'll let you do your own math with the number of pizza slices you usually eat, but I can tell you that the good folks at Stella's always had six happy, nearly-comatose customers walk out of their restaurant after those pies were consumed. Couple the GL of one pizza slice with the fact that most pizza also has 450 calories and 25 grams of fat per slice, and you have a recipe for delicious disaster inside your body.

You may think that by ignoring these facts you can blissfully go on eating your favorite foods. The truth is, your body does not see ignorance as bliss. Bashing my absolute favorite foods is not something I do for fun; I have just had my eyes opened wide to the long-term consequences of things like weekly stops at Stella's, and I want to make sure you know what you're dealing with before some mobster like Tony Soprano orders a hit on your health. I get super freaked out about high GLs not because I don't like counting higher than 20 (OK, I don't, but that's irrelevant), but because I've seen the consequences of high GL foods, and they're not pretty. High GL foods cause central weight gain, which offends my vanity as a girl and offends my health as a human being. Central weight gain is one of the first signs of insulin resistance, a condition where our bodies simply fail to process all the sugar we throw their way and store it as fat instead, and it's a precursor to diabetes. High GL foods also cause things like elevated blood pressure and triglyceride levels, and even put us at risk for heart disease. It also causes a type of inflammation in our cells that can manifest later as all sorts of horrible diseases like cancer. So when I encourage you to look at the food you eat in a different light, it's not because I hate pizza. I love the stuff, but, truthfully, it's probably a blessing I don't get my weekly fix anymore.


But, because hope springs eternal, not all is lost! There are plenty of ways to make your Italian food a little better for you! In fact, the real pizza inventors from Naples make their pizzas way differently than New York style pizza (which I always believed to be "real" Italian pizza), and it turns out it's better for you! Using techniques like smaller, thinner crusts, coupled with less cheese and more vegetables turns a glycemic nightmare into a whole pie that has under 1,000 calories! Additionally, pairing  your carbs with lean proteins is a great way to reduce the overall blood sugar impact of your meal.  Would my Great-Grandfather cringe to hear I use turkey instead of ground round to make my meatballs? Yes. But it's a little step I can take to keep me celebrating my Italian roots just a little bit longer. Just as a side note, there isn't an *exact* way to measure the benefit, so don't go crazy and think, "Well, just two meatballs and my pasta doesn't even count against me!" It really isn't that simple. But I'll tell you what is...


For a cool trick that you can try at home, check out this gluten-free pizza recipe that eliminates the guilt of a hand-tossed crust altogether! Once again, cauliflower is incognito, and it makes for great family treat that will have you seeking out a new favorite pizza joint -- one right in your own kitchen!


Mangia, my friends!






*[Editor's Note: Waist Management, as a very small media establishment, may be exempt from the above FCC regulation. Case law has determined that any media outlets with a following of less than three persons need not conform to these restrictions. While we have repeatedly emphasized this condition to the author, she has stubbornly asserted that by December 21 of this year, she will have no less than four followers, and is therefore to be commended for her foresight in compliance. What she does not take into account is that, according to the Mayans, the world will end on this very day, and, therefore, her compliance with FCC regulations will fail to be noted.] Yes, you just wasted 20 seconds of your life reading a made-up editorial note.

You Say Potato, I Say......Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

I feel I should beg my Irish ancestors forgiveness for the post I am about to write. Today I will be ranting against the staple vegetable of the Irish diet: the beloved potato. Only in this blog will you read that Oreos are good, and a vegetable is bad. But that's how I roll. 


Normally, as a health educator, I am a big advocate for all things that even look like a vegetable. Heck, I have even used garbanzo beans in a brownie recipe. True story. But a tuber that poses as a vegetable while having a higher glycemic load than a Snickers bar is like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Besides, you know how I feel about Snickers bars. Given the choice between a bar of crunchy goodness and a harmful vegetable, I'll vote to make meat and Snickers the new Irish classic.


(Pulls self away from that glorious food fantasy) As I was saying, potatoes are about the only vegetable I know that actually can do you more harm than good.  With a GL of 26--a number that is virtually a guarantee for weight gain--this veggie can send you on the path to diabetes quicker than Oreos or Fruity Pebbles. No, really. It's easy to trick yourself into thinking, "But at least they don't have any added sugar." Well, I'm here to tell you that your body could care less about added sugar or food labels. It only cares about what happens to the  blood glucose level when you feed it. And potatoes do not make it very happy. They send your blood sugar on a wild, crazy trip that will leave your body begging for "normal" stuff like Oreos. Like a vengeful cat who has been left alone for one too many weekends, it will find a way to make you regret your choice. Enter lethargy, insulin resistance, and eventually diabetes. Which really is way worse than finding cat crap outside the litter box. But I digress.


A lot of people don't seem to care. Consider this list of the top three vegetables that kids are eating these days:
                                                    

                                                     Potatoes

                                                     Tomatoes
                                                     Lettuce


Well, two out of three ain't bad, you may be thinking. Um, nope. Not when you consider that most of the potatoes are french fries, most of the tomatoes are ketchup, and most of the lettuce is that one little leaf they put on the fast food burgers for decoration.  So, if it weren't for fast foods, our kids would barely be getting vegetables at all. That statement should be enough to make even a junk food junkie cringe.


But I have some good news to top off all my tuber-hating. First, weirdly enough, french fries actually have a lower GL than baked potatoes. As long as you don't eat a super-sized box by yourself, you can save yourself about 4 GL points eating those lard-ridden potato sticks. Remember my defense of Paula Deen and her butter? Same principle applies here: the added fat slows down the digestion of the potato into sugar. But it doesn't make them good for you. If you like your spuds mashed, the news gets a bit better: those Thanksgiving classics have a GL of about 18.


And since not all tubers are equally offensive, I am excited about this link to a  super scrumptious garlic mashed potato recipe that combines the glycemic superstar of the potato family--the baby red has a GL of 12-- with the highly adaptable potato poser we in the health industry like to refer to as cauliflower.  This is a great substitute at Thanksgiving and for belated St. Patty's Day celebrations. Believe me, this recipe is so good that only your blood sugar will be able to tell the difference. Your tastebuds won't even know you're pulling a fast one on them. 


I hope adding the potato recipe puts me back in the good graces of my Irish ancestors. Since I ended up endorsing potatoes in the end, I guess we'll call the calling off...off.