Hey guys! Today we are going to talk about rice. The enemy of diabetics.
Now, I'm Doctor Ahmet Ergin and I'm an endocrinologist, diabetologist, diabetes
education specialist, you name it.
See tons of patients every day, deal with them every day,
love them. They love rice I love them.
They love rice, sometimes they create a conflict
So I found some solutions for you guys.
Let's get started
All right guys, so everybody loves rice Almost everybody
You know, it's very rare to find somebody who says: "Oh god you know
doc, you know. I hate rice you know don't have to, you don't have to talk to me
about that."
That doesn't happen and some people will say oh I don't eat rice.
Well, guess what? They lie.
So, just kidding or they hide information.
Let's put it nicely.
But, bottom line is rice tastes good.
I mean everybody loves rice now.
Personally of course I'm not a diabetic, I hope
When I say of course I can be diabetic, it's not that.
You know, I don't have to be but I'm not diabetic but
but, but, but, definitely I have to watch my own carbs myself otherwise
guess what happens
I have diabetes in my family, a lot of people do
and if you just live your life freely
without any concern, caution you can be there
and join the rest of your family now.
What do I do?
Personally, I don't eat rice and everything you know but I love the rice
alternatives too and when I eat rice I keep my portion
very small, not going on heavy on the rice and I'm
very active so it doesn't bother me like
if you're an active person
even when you're diabetic if you changed
your lifestyle, you're working out, you're running every day
or bicycling, whatever you do, the carbs are not going to affect you as much
because your body is burning it. The only time you have problems with carbs,
you're eating carbs you're sitting on it.
That's the problem with
people, especially in America we don't
even get out of our cars to grab
something. You know, everything is now
drive through thanks to COVID-19.
Now it's even worse nobody goes anywhere.
Everybody is sitting at their home.
If they want to go eat they just go
drive through. They're eating in their cars
What do you expect to happen, right? But
there are rice alternatives now.
Rice vs brown rice is something that
a lot of people ask questions about.
Well, to be honest with you brown rice vs rice doesn't make a huge difference
You know, like, the regular rice has a
glycemic index of 80. So
it tends to spike your blood sugar and
rice is something kind of
dense so glycemic load is high with that
Remember we always keep this watermelon
example where you know watermelon has a
very high glycemic index which can spark
your blood sugar, but the carbohydrates
in one portion is small because it's mostly water, right?
If something has a lot of fiber
and water in it, it's unlikely to spike
your blood sugar although they're sweet.
Just like the watermelon.
If you're having one slice of watermelon
that shouldn't be a huge deal, but with
the rice or anything heavy like bread,
that's dense you can tell. It's like, you know, mass without much water in it definitely can
spike your blood sugar.
So the rice, for example, and the glycemic
index is up there is up to, like, 80 or so
with the regular rice and brown rice is around 68-65-68
something like that. And a lot of
people doesn't understand what the
glycemic index is about. So basically
what we are doing here? You know when they
do glycemic index studies, they give 50
grams of sugar to someone
and they compare that 50 grams of
something else, whatever that is, in this
case like rice maybe
and then see how much the blood sugar
spikes, right. So you don't have to
sit down and you know re-experiment everything
So, that's why they have these guidelines
and this is on a regular individual, you may be a
little different but
it's a good thing for you to compare so
for example, regular glucose like pure sugar that's
100, that's the gold standard now.
if either rice is spiking your blood
sugar is if the glycemic is
index is 80 that means that it is close
to pure sugar
and only 20% less than the sugar
so it will spike your blood sugar even the glycemic index of
things like that are down to 50 that doesn't mean
that it's not going to spike your blood sugar.
It can if you have no insulin in
your body or if you're super insulin resistant
anything can spike your blood sugar even
with the low glycemic index.
But it shouldn't be as bad as something
that has high glycemic index right
So in this case, you know, you can say
that, "Okay, well, rice will spike my blood sugar because
the glycemic index is up there at 80.
We typically recommend, you know, below 45-50 glycemic index
if you want to have carbs. The brown rice is up there, too, you know.
65-68 is really not that great
Now, what are the other alternatives
and again you can find a lot of things
that I'm going to talk today down in the link below
I have an affiliate link so if you
purchase those products from Amazon
or anything else in that regard, I will get a tiny commission
and I'm not really after that but if
you're going to purchase it anyways you can definitely support us. I don't mind that
So, having said that, let's move on. What are the other things that
you can do still enjoy the rice taste and feeling
but don't let your blood sugar high?
A couple things now:
if you are really looking for rice rice,
the best thing you can do
the number one thing that you can try
is "shirataki rice" and sometimes called "miracle rice"
again, you can find us on Amazon in the link below but that has
no carbs whatsoever so you can eat it's
like a free food
And if you want to put your food or
anything on top of your rice
that shirataki rice will be great and most
people don't even realize
that it's not real rice. So that's number one.
Now, it doesn't have any taste by the way by itself
it goes with the taste of whatever you
put on it so that's a good thing now if
you are looking for a different taste and some nutty flavor
you can definitely go for something like barley
There's something called "pearl barley".
You know, that has a lot of
fiber in it and some protein in it as well
it takes a little longer time to cook
for things like that that are high in fiber
these grains that are typically very
high in fiber that may take longer time to cook
the problem with the rice, yes you can cook it in 10 minutes
and that because they rip off all their
fibers and stuff before it comes to your table.
That's why it brown rice is a little bit
better but still not that great.
But things like pearl barley is
minimally processed and you can use just
barley you know that's not processed
barley as well you just need to use a pressure cooker
that you know gets the job done fast
otherwise, it may take you
a long time same thing with the oats, right.
If you don't use a pressure cooker,
that's going to take an hour, versus
sometimes my wife will make that
great steel cut oatmeal in five minutes
in pressure cooker, I'm like, "that's great"
you know, what else can I ask for
Before I forget I want to also mention
the glycemic index of
barley which is 28. Again that doesn't
mean that it's free food but it means
that it's going to spike your blood
sugar much less compared to
the rice which has a glycemic index of 80.
So, pearl barley is another one.
Quinoa, quinoa is a great glycemic index is down to 50
and it tastes great it's an acquired
taste goes well with a lot of things. So, definitely give it a try to quinoa
as well. By the way remember I had a
video about "worst vegetables" and there I was like
basically smashing potato
potato can have a glycemic index of 110
That's like the worst thing ever.
So, let's move on to rice cauliflower so if you're a fan of
cauliflower and if you like that already,
you can just buy the cauliflower rice
and that has like a super low glycemic index and
super low carbs.
That is something else you can consider instead of rice
and again if you have these things in
your kitchen, your hand and your easy
access, then you will make it.
So, as of today, go buy these things
and sometimes even the reason I'm giving
you the Amazon link also
is you may hate Amazon, it's a big
capitalism thing and you know it kills
the small businesses sometimes.
That's all true but at the same time
it's a good thing that they created this
super convenient thing where
a lot of things you cannot find in a
store you can find on Amazon it's on
your door in two days I mean I'm guilty
as charged, I use amazon a lot myself but
all these things it's just in your fingertips,
you can just buy it, have it ready, try it
make sure you have good recipes.
Youtube has a lot of recipes for
these different rices so make sure you
check them out and have a nice meal
try that tonight and give me your comments
tell me how it felt, you know, how you
liked. Not everybody's going to like
everything, but give it a try and
whatever it takes to keep your blood
sugar down. Remember, you know
trying different things, you
don't have to be even a diabetic.
I tried shirataki rice myself, I tried
shirataki meals myself and
that's perfectly okay. You don't have to
even have to be a diabetic, so
just be open to different tastes, you know, these things are
eaten consumed in Asia in
different parts of the world. Why not?
Give it a try, you don't have to travel
all the way to China to try
these things or Taiwan, whatever. Give me
your comments, make sure you share this video
and have a great day guys. We'll talk to
you in the next one. Remember
we have a lot of videos that are all about diabetes
and overall health. So, watch them,
educate yourself and be empowered.
Talk to you later.