This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Today, I'm joined by Nyo Hong Lin and Yu Shan.
Coming up, ever hit that 3 p.m. wall after a lunch of noodles or a big sandwich?
Well, you're not alone.
But what if the secret to steady energy all day wasn't giving up carbs, but just choosing them?
Mentally smarter, we're cracking open the glycemic index today.
It's your body's blood sugar speedometer.
If you will, we'll break down the real science, cut through the diet trends and give you the simple, actionable tips you need to eat for lasting energy.
After that, Roundtable's Happy Place and the two ladies in the studio with me just came back from a big trip.
We're going to learn about that through Happy Place this afternoon, so please do stay tuned.
Our podcast listeners can find us at Roundtable China on Apple Podcasts.
Don't forget, we love hearing from you as well.
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And now...
That mid-afternoon energy crash after a carb-heavy lunch is a familiar feeling for so many of us who can't imagine life without rice or noodles or bread or anything high in carbohydrates.
Sounds so good.
Happens to me around 2 pm, although that's the time the show ends, so that might be a coincidence or not.
But it's true.
Everybody crashes in the middle of the afternoon.
Well, enter the glycemic index, or GI.
Again, it's essentially a speedometer for how food affects your blood sugar.
Today, we'll get into the science behind the concept.
We'll explore its surge in popularity for waste management and overall wellness.
And we will offer some practical tips on what we should be eating and what we shouldn't.
This is a topic, Ngo Hung Linh, that is very, very close to your heart.
You're very, very aware of the glycemic index.
Yes, it's very, very close to my heart because I'm a victim of high GI food.
See, now I'm going to admit that GI and the glycemic index is not something that I was really familiar with before.
Yishan, were you?
I only saw it on product labels saying that this is low GI, supposedly it's good for health.
But after a bit of research I understood that the glycemic index, or GI, is a scale that ranks higher carbohydrates containing foods and drinks based on just how quickly they raise your blood sugar.
It's like a ruler that measures the blood, the sugar in your bloodstreams.
So food with a higher gi tends to just cause a rapid spike in blood sugar, while the lower gi food leads to say, a slower, more gradual rise of blood sugar.
That doesn't give you that Oh, I'm so sleepy after lunch kind of effect.
Yes, and I am a huge, huge fan of high GI food.
Dumplings.
Dumplings, noodles, and sweet, sweet fruit, which is debatable.
We can talk about that later.
And after having... instant noodle this noon and being on the show.
On one hand, I'm super excited about the topics and can provide some of my insights that I learned from the research.
On the other hand, the other part of my brain is screaming come on, it's sleeping time, nap time in the noon.
And that is That is because of the guilty, guilty food I had.
I wonder, because dumplings and noodles and foods that are, I guess, high in GI are a common part of the Chinese diet?
And I've heard multiple times that a little mid-afternoon nap is also a common part of Chinese culture.
I wonder if there might be a connection there.
And also when it comes to food, I think it's very complicated to understand food.
You have to think about how sweet they are.
You have to think about what are the calories containing one gram of, I don't know.
Anything.
Anything.
And also there's GI, there's GL, which is... different index, it's really complicated.
It takes the fun out of eating.
It really does.
So how do they measure this then?
How do they measure the GI in foods?
Because there's a scale, right?
It's not just good or bad.
It's a little more complicated than that.
Yeah.
When it comes to GI, the scale goes from zero to a hundred.
So with pure glucose, it's of the highest GI and is given a value of 100.
Pure sugar.
Right and other high GI foods that's rated 70 or more, which should be chosen least often among many of us.
And some food examples.
Covers like white rice, fine rice, fine bread, fried say food, like fried fries, chips or corn chips those very delicious ones, they are of high GI.
Then there's the medium GI, ranging from 56 to 69, which we can take.
Sometimes include sweet corns bananas, raw pineapple or raisins or whole grain wheat.
Sweet potato, oatmeal, pasta, certain types of pastas.
Right.
And then there are the lower GI ones, which are those foods with their GI under 55 or less.
And these are the food that we should generally include in our meals, including green vegetables, most fruits, not including watermelon, as we discussed earlier.
No, watermelon is 72.
You know who's also 72?
White bread.
Oh, you didn't know?
White bread's terrible for you.
It's terrible.
Yeah, it's really not good for you at all.
Yeah, others on the low list, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, green beans.
Brussels sprouts.
All the boring foods.
Tomato, carrots.
Apples.
Salad stuff.
I can't stand apples.
Cherries are also good.
I wish I liked them, but I don't.
But one note here is that only foods that contain carbohydrates, they have a GI.
So foods such as oil, fats and just meats.
In general, they do not have a GI, even though some of them can affect your blood sugar for certain groups of people like people with diabetes.
Unless you're cooking them in a delicious way.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, how you cook the foods makes a difference in the GI level.
So food, I mean...
This isn't a term that just popped up on TikTok, right?
This isn't a trend.
This isn't something that's debatable.
This is a term that's real science.
And we can use this effectively to uh, help our health out when we're choosing our foods.
Yeah, sometimes when i mention gi to to my friends and colleagues around, some of them are like is this really scientific?
Can you use it clinically like?
Or it's just like um consumption say trend yeah, like a trendy word yeah, that people follow.
But the GI is actually rooted in solid scientific principles.
And in fact, the low GI concept wasn't just invented for the wellness market or dietary management.
Its origination comes back to medical nutrition, particularly for individuals managing conditions like diabetes or weight loss, since the index has increased understanding about just how carbon-hydrate food consumption affects your blood sugar.
And nowadays the GI is well-established in research literature and there are also popular resources or papers just analyzing how GI can help with people with those certain conditions.
Yeah, it's in some clinical nutrition guidelines in various countries Australia Canada, different European countries too.
But it does have um its limits, because when it comes to shaping overall food guidance, its role is still a little bit up for debate.
And the reason for that is because GI is just one, it's a one dimensional measure.
It doesn't take into account a lot of different things.
So if we rely on it too heavily, it can make food sound simply like I said before it's not just good or bad, but it can make food sound like they are good or bad.
And that doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.
Yes.
And also we mentioned GL, that is glycemic load, which is another concept.
And it takes GI further by accounting for the amount of carbohydrates in a typical serving of food.
And we trash talked watermelon a bit, but I actually love watermelon.
This summer, they were amazing.
Very sweet in the texture.
I didn't know a watermelon could taste that good.
Sorry, back to the story.
Yes, and watermelon has a high GI but a low GL because it contains relatively few carbs per serving, and that is what I was talking about.
Understanding food is hard because there are different scales and different ways.
And for example, some fruit specifically are not that sweet.
It tastes not that sweet, yet its GI and GL index might be high.
So if you're really concerning, or if you belong to specific vulnerable groups, say having diabetes symptoms, or are high risk in getting diabetes, or For some women who are pregnant, you need to definitely learn a bit more and consult for clinical advices.
Yeah.
Speaking of those groups, the primary audience for low GI foods are those, I guess, with direct medical needs.
And those would be people who are diabetic or even pre-diabetic.
Here in China, that applies to 140 million people.
There are also nearly 400 million individuals who are managing obesity here in the country.
There are about 300 million seniors as well.
So, for these groups mentioned, understanding GI is vital for managing their health, their diet and their blood sugar levels effectively.
And in the Chinese market, there's been an expansion of this audience.
So nowadays when say, the Chinese netizens swipe on social media and realize oh, this is a low GI product, it's no longer just for disease management or just for certain groups of audience, but rather for general public, to the broader public, health and wellness.
Nowadays, with such a wider range of health-conscious consumers, they're paying much more attention to GI as part of the health awareness that's been raised recently.
We mentioned keywords like low sugar or sugar subsidies or probiotics.
These are all, say, consumption keywords.
That's the quote-unquote keywords among a lot of the products here in China as well.
Yeah, so the market here is aware of this and companies are responding to it.
All right, so just quickly a last question as we wrap this one up.
What are some recommended foods, or maybe recipes, or what do you have to help us achieve these goals?
Low GI foods.
Well, for grains, staple food, we recommend barley.
We recommend brown rice instead of white rice, wild rice as well, and steel-cut oats.
And also we recommend you to cook them smartly, because for different types of food it takes different cooking method to maintain the same level of GI or lowering it even.
This is what I wanted to talk about.
So if you cook pasta al dente, which means keeping it a little bit firm.
So maybe instead of cooking it eight minutes, you'll cook it for like seven minutes.
I don't know.
I'd have to look that up.
But that lowers the starch gelatinization, because when pasta is cooked al dente, its starch granules remain structured.
They don't get as swollen as they do if you cook them longer.
And that preserves the pasta's physical structure and it makes it more resistant to digestive enzymes.
I did not know about that.
And besides that...
Watch out for the seasoning level you're thinking about, because if you enjoy food that are relatively sweeter and saltier and even spicier, you might be adding a bit too much season in it.
If you eat a carrot but you cover it in melted nacho cheese well, you might not be achieving the goal that you're looking for.
Put it on your radar, right?
Can't hurt to be aware of this type of information.
Maybe, if you're looking for a little bit of a healthier diet, you can start to pay attention to the glycemic index and see if you can make some decisions there to change.
All right.
When we come back, we'll get into Roundtable's happy place and we'll learn about the trip that these two just took.
Delivery.
Delivery.
Delivery.
Delivery.
What is it?
Happiness from Roundtable.
It is Roundtable's happy place time and somebody well, not just somebody, two people were away on a business trip to somewhere pretty far away in the western part of the country Xinjiang, yes.
Yeah, like I mentioned earlier to a lot of the crew members during the Xinjiang trip, Xinjiang is some place that I consider as a second hometown in some way, because A big part of my family, to be honest, are from there.
My father was born there.
My grandparents went there over 60 years ago to develop the far western region of this country.
Both of them have a very deep and long-lasting love and passion for that land that we call Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region today.
And I'm able to travel there.
When they couldn't, my grandpa, he just passed his 85th birthday during our trip, to be honest.
And both of my grandparents.
They're kind of beyond the age of taking a five four-ish hour flight and go back to their old house, which has already been sold last year.
So I was like, I kind of want to bring you guys something back.
Grandpa, what would you want?
And they both say no reasons, no dates, no dry fruits.
They're delicious, by the way.
They're very delicious.
They're unique to this land.
But for my grandparents, they're kind of tired of it.
So I was trying to get innovative in what to bring back for them.
So I chose two.
The first one is Nang. which is the very locally featuring ethnic culture kind of bread.
Imagine it's a pizza without the topping.
So it's the nang that's so uniquely made with the flavor of Xinjiang.
And then there is the brick tea, zhuan cha, or fu zhuan tea.
Brick tea.
The shape of the tea looks like a piece of brick.
Okay.
And they press.
It's actually a kind of black tea, but it's kind of lighter, so that it's so good to be made into salty milk tea.
That's also unique to Xinjiang as well.
My grandma, for every single morning, cooked that as part of her and my grandpa's breakfast.
So I thought...
Since it's hard to get in Beijing, they'll be happy with it.
That's my happy place.
I'm preparing these gifts to be brought to them tomorrow.
And during our entire trip, little by little, Yushan would share some tips of how to enjoy a certain type of food and also which of the foods which is the best part.
And maybe there are some specialty that we didn't have the chance to enjoy, but she will explain how come those are the best ones.
Well, that's kind of like a local tour.
It's a great teacher to have, because her grandparents, your grandparents.
They grew up there and lived there for over 60 years.
You said.
Sort of.
They came when they were younger than I am.
Wow.
Yeah.
What were some of those tips?
I'm curious.
Different types of ones, because we mentioned before the show that I well also during the show, that I love noodles and Xinjiang has one of the best noodles I've ever tried.
I cannot resist it.
What's so special about it?
What's different from those noodles and the Beijing noodles?
I think it's the texture of the noodle itself.
I understand the topping can be very important, but the texture for me is also quite important.
And the freshly made ones, man-made ones are the best in my opinion.
Stop skipping the food details.
Is it a softer texture?
No, it's very chewable, very chewy and a little bit bouncy, the noodle itself.
And of course, the topping is quite delicious.
You've got the best lamb you can have there as well.
Very nice.
And besides that, when I say that I love to be back in the studio, I meant it.
It's always all the lively conversation with exchange.
But when you get to go to the field and really talk to people who are living the stories that we talk about here on Roundtable, you get much, much more interesting details.
For example, Yushan mentioned raisins because raisin is a local specialty.
In Xinjiang, they have the best grapes.
We talked about the sweetness level of fruit.
For watermelon, the very good one, they also just have a sweetness level of around 10 or 16.
Pretty high on the glycemic index, I guess.
That is another...
Way to look at it.
Look at me applying things I learned seven minutes ago.
But for grapes, the grapes can be as sweet as 24.
So it's really sweet.
And imagine the sweet being constructed. concentrated in raisins.
It's even sweeter.
So raisin is a Xinjiang local specialty, and we get to visit a raisin factory.
And in the factory, you would not believe this.
Can you imagine?
Each and every raisin you consume have gone through the process of being taken a picture and the picture is compared to the perfect raisin in the database of an AI machine.
Oh, wow.
And they would classify the raisins using artificial intelligence technology.
They take pictures of each and every one and then put them into the perfect ones, the medium ones and the relatively not that good.
So let's bake it in a bread instead of selling it directly once.
So those kind of details are the reasons that I really feel like I need to go to the field and understand what is happening in China.
It's one of the really cool things about China is that It's a tall and wide country.
This is a difference.
China and Canada are two of the biggest countries in the world, geographically speaking, right?
But the difference with Canada is it's more.
It is tall but population-wise the majority of our population lives near the border, so it's more horizontal than it is vertical.
And you don't really see a whole tremendous change in culture from Vancouver on the west side to...
St.
John's, Newfoundland on the east side or Nova Scotia where I'm from.
But in China you do get that cultural difference, the food differences, the language differences, which makes it a very unique place.
It makes it a cool place to live for me, as a matter of fact.
Speaking of your trip, next week we have three full episodes now.
Niu Honglin, correct me where I'm wrong here.
Three full episodes of Roundtable next week will be dedicated to the trip to Xinjiang.
You can find those at radio.cgtn.com.
You can find them on YouTube by searching Roundtable China.
You can find them on Weibo.
If you're searching domestically, you can search Roundtable China as well.
Excellent.
That'll do it for today's show.
I'm Steve, together with Niu Honglin and Yushan.
Thank you very much for sharing your time, and please do join us once again.
