Are Starchy Vegetables OK for Diabetics to Eat?
If you really hate reading long explanations… I am sorry because this is more than just a yes or a no answer. It might be tempting to think that simply popping some pills or injecting insulin will take care of your problem of high blood sugar levels. In fact many people with Type 2 diabetes could be treated without medications if they would make the changes, principally in their diet.
But let’s backtrack for a moment, and discuss what a starch actually is.
What is a starch? A starch is really nothing more than a long chain of more simple sugars, which need to be broken down. And there are two different varieties of starch that occur in most foods: amylose and amylopectin. Typically, amylopectin makes up 70 to 80% of the starch in a given grain, while amylose makes up the other 20 to 30% of it. What’s interesting is that these two work much differently from one another.
Amylopectin has been shown to actually break down, enter your blood stream and raise your blood sugar levels just as quickly as sucrose (simple sugar), does. So in effect, eating most starchy vegetables is essentially the same as eating something fairly sugary like fruit. However, the same study found that your use of insulin is lower, and your blood sugar raises more slowly when the food you eat contains primarily amylose. While this state is rare in nature, there may eventually come a point in time when high amylose foods are produced with Type 2 diabetics in mind.
Everything in moderation: The most important thing about any recommendation is that you practice moderation. Keep in mind that Type 2 diabetes is not your only potential health problem if you carte blanchely consume massive quantities of just about anything. So any suggestion that a particular vegetable is “safe” needs to be taken as meaning that such a vegetable is safe in the context of reasonable caloric consumption. With that being the case, there are actually two types of naturally occurring food items which contain large amounts of amylose, meaning they will not impact your blood sugar levels quite as intensely as sugar does.
- the first of these is potatoes… in addition to being filling and having a boatload of nutrients in their skins, potatoes have a relatively amylose-intensive starch in them, but
- the very best is the less sticky types of long grain rice. Rices have a lower glycemic load to them, most likely because they contain large amounts of amylose.
Since the study which found out about this took place in 1986, there has been ample time to corroborate their findings. And since most starchy foods essentially break down with the same speed as simpler sugars do, the easy answer to the question of ‘yay or nay on starchy veggies’ is a nay. While you can enjoy nearly any type of food in moderation, you would be well advised to keep your starchy vegetables on the less frequent side of your diet.
