The main carbohydrate (read: sugar) source of the typical American dinner is either pasta, rice or potatoes. Anybody who is trying to keep their blood sugar down and improve their diabetes knows that these carbohydrates quickly convert into sugar during the digestion process, releasing a surge of insulin. This axis-of-evil blood-sugar-spikers are not a smart dining option for those looking to lose weight or lower their blood sugar levels.

Dinners are most often consumed at around 7:00 p.m. Few Americans go for very long walks after dinner or engage in other forms of exercise; the most common activity is watching T.V. Though eating occasional high-carb meals like rice, pasta and potatoes won’t necessarily guarantee inducing someone into a diabetic coma, these foods should be consumed rarely and certainly earlier in the day (lunch) so there is plenty of time to burn off the sugars.

Low-carb noodle and rice replacements like Miracle Noodle and Miracle Rice are perfect for those managing diabetes. Comprised entirely of fiber, Miracle Noodle products slightly expand in the stomach, helping you stay full, preventing the dangerous dietary pitfalls of cravings, largely brought on by consuming foods that burn up too quickly (carbohydrates).

But what about potatoes? A major staple of the American diet, can potatoes be a part of a healthy, low glycemic diet? Can they be added with Miracle Noodle products? And what’s the better potato: white or sweet?

White potatoes and the glycemic index

Baked potatoes with bacon, chives and sour cream....what carb-crazy dieter doesn’t like the sound of that mouth-watering side dish? Though adding butter or sour cream and bacon bits to a baked potato might not sound like a healthy option to some, it’s actually better than eating a potato plain.

The fat from the butter or sour cream will somewhat slow down the blood sugar spike that comes from the potato, especially a plain skinless white potato, which clocks in at a whopping 98 on the glycemic index (GI) scale. Eating the potato with the skin lowers the GI ranking to approximately 70, but even that number is way above the level considered high on the GI scale (55 and above is conisered high).

Russet potatoes and red potatoes might seem like a healthier option but really, they are not. They rank 111 and 89, respectively. Yes, 111...it’s not a misprint; it’s possible for something to rank higher than 100 on the scale. Glucose, a simple sugar also ranks higher than 100, so it’s easy to see how quickly some potatoes break down into simple sugars and raise blood sugar levels.

Sweet potatoes...lower on the GI scale but hold the fries

Boiled sweet potatoes are definitely a healthier option than white potatoes. They rank 44 on the GI scale, far lower than every variety of white potato. North Carolina State researchers confirmed in a study that sweet potatoes are low on the GI scale and can help improve diabetes.

And sweet potatoes are loaded with vitamins and minerals, including, in a baked-in-skin, unsalted, one-cup serving:

• 7 grams of fiber
• 65% of the recommended daily intake of Vitamin C
• A huge amount of Vitamin A: nearly 800% of the daily intake suggestion
• anywhere from 12% to 30% of B vitamins
• Nearly a third recommended intake of potassium

Though sweet potatoes clearly have the nutritional edge over white potatoes, don’t assume that ordering sweet potato fries versus regular french fries means you’re getting the same benefits as eating a steamed or baked sweet potato.

For those watching their weight and trying to improve their diabetes and avoiding heart disease, eating anything fried is highly discouraged. Sweet potatoes cooked in vegetable oil have a much higher ranking on the GI scale (70 or higher). Plus, vegetable oils turn rancid when cooked, which could be a big reason why chronic inflammation and heart disease is so prevalent in our modern society.

If you’re going to make homemade sweet potato fries from time to time, opt instead for coconut oil or even unrefined lard. Despite the connotation of lard, when it’s unprocessed and exposed to heat it does not spoil or chemically denature like vegetable oils do.

Sweet Potatoes and Miracle Noodle: Partners in a Dietary Crime, or a Match so Divine?

Nutritionists urge dieters to not eat more than one primary source of carbohydrate during one sitting. For example, never eat spaghetti and mashed potatoes. The double high-carb load of the noodles and potatoes would certainly make your blood sugar spike and then cause an energy crash. After the crash is experienced, people who are not nutritionally literate often reach for another high-carb option like a dessert.

So wouldn’t eating Miracle Noodle and a sweet potato go against the rule of eating only one major carb at a time? No, because Miracle Noodles are comprised entirely of fiber of a plant, they contain virtually no carbohydrates, ranking them zero (0) on the GI scale. So you can eat your favorite Miracle Noodle product at the same time as sweet potatoes.

In fact, here’s a couple recipes that combines both. The first one comes to Miracle Noodle courtesy of Dana McDowell.

Waldorf Miracle Rice Salad

Ingredients:

1 Sweet Potato Cubed

1 Red Apple Cubed

1 Stalk Celery Diced

1/4 Cup Dried Cranberries

Chopped Walnuts

1/4 Cup Plain Yogurt

1 Tablespoon Fresh Lemon Juice

1/4 Teaspoon Cinnamon

1 Package Miracle Rice

Favorite Greens

Cooking instructions:

Steam sweet potato 5-6 minutes then rinse under cold water.

Whisk yogurt, lemon juice, and cinnamon together.

Combine sweet potato, apple, celery, and cranberries, and Miracle Rice. Toss with the yogurt dressing.

Serve on a bed of your favorite greens, and sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

Miracle Noodle with Sweet Potatoes, Tomatoes, and Garlicky Kale

Serves 4

Time: 20 minutes

Sea salt

1 small bunch kale, stems removed and chopped (about 8 to 10 stalks)( you can use spinach if you prefer)

1 large sweet potato, cubed (about 3 cups, skin on)

1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes, halved

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 bags of Miracle Noodle Angel Hair, Fettuccine, or Ziti shirataki pasta

2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

¼ cup toasted pine nuts(optional)

Juice of ½ lemon

Red pepper flakes, to taste

Directions:

1. Put a pot of well-salted water on to boil.
2. Prepare all veggies for cooking.
3. Add Miracle Noodle to boiling water and cook for 3-5 minutes. Drain and return noodles to a hot skillet and move around the pan for 1-2 minutes. This will remove some of the moisture from the noodles. Set noodles aside in a bowl.
4. Meanwhile, in a large skillet over medium heat, add oil, a few pinches of sea salt and sweet potatoes. Cook, uncovered, without stirring, 5 minutes. Toss potatoes once, cover skillet with lid, and cook 5 minutes more .
5. Add garlic, kale, tomatoes, and red pepper flakes. Crush a few tomatoes on the bottom of the skillet so that their juices are released (this will help steam the kale). Cook just until the kale has wilted and turns bright green, 2 to 3 minutes. (Do not overcook!) Remove from heat. Squeeze lemon juice over the vegetables. (Bonus: Lemon juice's vitamin C helps your body absorb the iron from the kale.)
6. Toss Miracle Noodles with olive oil. Add sautéed vegetables and pine nuts and toss. Season with sea salt to taste. Serve immediately.

This recipe was adapted from a recipe by Sarah Britton, a holistic nutritionist, vegetarian chef, and the creator of the award-winning blog My New Roots. Sarah is currently a chef at three organic restaurants in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she has earned praise for her creative and adventurous recipes. A certified nutritional practitioner, she is also the founder of New Roots Holistic Nutrition, where she educates others to be an active participant in their own health and healing.

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Catchy titles such as “Top 10 Low-Carb Foods to Help You Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days,” might get you to read an article.

 But the truth is that if you’re on a low-carb diet, you don’t need to search the supermarket aisles for foods that have a “Low-Carb!” label.

All you need to help with weight loss are some natural foods that don’t need any branding because in nature they do not contain many carbohydrates.

 Let’s take a look at these special five natural low-carb foods:

1. Water

 Ok, so technically water isn’t a food. But it can help you lose weight and contains zero carbohydrates. This is the most critical component of our cells, muscles, organs, and tissues. We are comprised of almost 70 percent water.

When it comes to weight loss, water is an easy solution. Simply drink two full glasses of water about 15 minutes or so before a meal. This will help you feel fuller, perhaps reducing your caloric intake per meal by at least 100. Over the course of a week and three meals per day, that’s 2100 calories or 8,400 calories per month less from just drinking water!

 2. Flaxseed Oil

Most vegetable oils are not healthy to cook with but flaxseed oil, in its uncooked state, has one of the highest Omega-3 fatty acid profiles of any vegetable oil. Omega-3’s help fight inflammation and have other health benefits such as fat metabolism and insulin resistance.

 Try to buy flaxseed oil with lignans, which are a type of antioxidants found in plants. But as soon as you open a bottle of flaxseed oil, refrigerate it. Because there is very little saturated fat, flaxseed oil can go rancid. Add to a smoothie or vegetable juice in the morning.

3. Whey Protein Powder

 Something else you can put in your morning healthy smoothie is whey, which, along with casein, is the major protein found in milk. Whey is more digestible than casein (at least for most people) because it contains soluble fiber (just like Miracle Noodle!).

Commonly referred to as the gold standard of protein because of its easy digestibility, whey protein contains the fat-burning amino acid leucine. Add a handful of blueberries to your whey protein morning smoothie, along with the flaxseed oil. You can skip the milk because milk is higher in carbs than whey.

 4.  Apples

The phrase, “an apple away keeps the doctor away,” could be applied also to weight loss, especially if you eat two apples. Two medium size apples contain 10 grams of fiber, roughly a third of the recommended daily value.

 Apples contain the soluble fiber, pectin, which helps move food through the digestive system and through the elimination process. Apples are made mostly of water but do contain phytonutrients (antioxidants) that shouldn’t be avoided even if you’re on a low-carb diet.

If you’re concerned about sugar in apples, opt for green varieties as they tend to be lower in sugar.

 5. Green leafy vegetables

One group of foods that you don’t need to worry about sugars or carb content is green-leafy veggies. Foods like spinach, broccoli, kale, chard, arugula, asparagus, green beans, etc...are nutrient all-stars, exemplifying the very essence of nutrient density, meaning, the highest amount of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants in the least amount of calories.

 You should combine green leafy vegetables, though, with some healthy dietary fat such as olive oil or avocados, otherwise, you may get hungry soon after eating veggies by themselves. If that happens, you may fall off the low-carb bandwagon. Don’t let that happen!

And of course, we need to add a 6th food to this list: Miracle Noodle, duh!

Comprised 97% of water and 3% soluble fiber, Miracle Noodle helps keep you full but contains 0 carbs!

Save almost 30% on Miracle Noodle

Share the joys of eating all the noodles you want without the guilt. As an incentive, when you share Miracle Noodle on Facebook, Twitter or via email, and your friends click your share link, both you and your friend will receive 13% off your next order. Here’s the link:  ?saopen=loyalty  …

Save an additional 15% off every order by enrolling in the Miracle Noodle auto ship program. Choose which products you want to be delivered and how often. It’s that simple. Join today!

Do you know how many grams of carbohydrates a tortilla has? 

How about a serving of rice. And how much is a serving? Is it one-half cup, one-third? If you have three-quarters of a cup, how many grams of carbohydrates is that?

(If you eat Miracle Rice, it's easy to know how many grams of carbohydrates per serving: 0. Zero. None. Nil.)

How many grams of carbs does a cup of beans have? Do all beans have the same amount of carbohydrates or do Pinto beans have more than Navy? 

And what about bread, pasta, potatoes and your other favorite starchy carbohydrates? Not to mention fruits....

As you can see, unless you're Rain Man and have a photographic memory of food labels, it could be an unattainable goal to try and count carbs. 

But what you can do is learn what a serving size of various foods is and the corresponding amount of carbs to get a general idea of how many carbohydrates you're consuming on any given day. 

Let's take a serving size of rice (it's one-third cup, by the way) and bread (one slice) for example. Each contains about 15 grams of carbohydrates, so if you had two slices of toast in the morning and some rice for lunch, you'd know you've already consumed about 45 grams of carbs. 

If for dinner, you ate a half-cups worth of mashed potatoes and had a small apple for dessert, you're adding another 30 grams of carbs (15 grams each). 

Is 75 grams of carbohydrates too much, too little or somewhere in between?

It's impossible to say. Everybody is different. For people who get no exercise, the low end of the carb spectrum is probably better. 

Most health experts suggest that carbohydrate consumption should fall between 45 and 65 percent of total calories, so if you're eating 2,000 calories a day, 1,000 calories (50%) would come from carbs. There are 4 calories in 1 gram of carbohydrates, so 1,000 divided by 4 = 250 grams of carbohydrates. 

Does that sound like a shockingly high number of carbs if you're on a low-carb diet? 

Pay attention to how you feel throughout the day, and maintain a food journal if you're new to low-carb dieting. 

If you want to severely limit your carb intake, try to spread your carbs throughout the day. Always eat natural fat and foods with fiber (green leafy vegetables are a great source) at every meal to help you stay full and provide you with steady energy. You can safely limit your intake of carbs, but if it's at the expense of feeling depleted energetically and experiencing intense cravings, you're not doing yourself any good by limiting carbs. 

And of course, not all carbs are created equally. Stick with old-world European whole grain breads, which are high in fiber and devoid of refined ingredients. But even this kind of bread should be limited to one or two slices daily. Your main source of carbs should be low-starch veggies. Again, green veggies are king. Moderate your fruit intake to one serving one or two times per day. 

Do this and you won't have to be a Rain Man Carb Counter!

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