Bread & Pastry

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Low GI diet

What is GI?GI is stand for Glycemic Index or Glycaemic Index.A concept that was developed by Dr. David J. Jenkins and colleagues in 1980 - 1981 at University of Toronto to identify which food or to categorized it for people with diabetes problem.GI were used to measure the effect of carbohydrates on blood glucose levels.

Whats the different between low and high GI?When human body break down the carbohydrates in digestion process,if the carbs break down and releasing glucose rapidly into the bloodstream it is called high GI level.Meanwhile if the carbs break down slowly,it is called low GI level.

How they measuring the GI level?According to the method used by University of Sydney, to determine a food's GI rating, measured portions of the food containing 10 - 50 grams of carbohydrate are fed to 10 healthy people after an overnight fast. Finger-prick blood samples are taken at 15-30 minute intervals over the next two hours. These blood samples are used to construct a blood sugar response curve for the two hour period. The area under the curve (AUC) is calculated to reflect the total rise in blood glucose levels after eating the test food. The GI rating (%) is calculated by dividing the AUC for the test food by the AUC for the reference food (same amount of glucose) and multiplying by 100 (see Figure 1). The use of a standard food is essential for reducing the confounding influence of differences in the physical characteristics of the subjects. The average of the GI ratings from all ten subjects is published as the GI of that food.
What are the benefits of Glycemic Index to us?After understands what is the GI stand for,we should now know that having a low GI food will help our body to maintain its energy last longer.Here are more benefit we will get for obtains these type of food:

Low GI carbs prolong physical endurance
Low GI carbs reduce hunger and keep you fuller for longer
Low GI carbs reduce blood cholesterol levels
Low GI carbs reduce the risk of heart disease
Low GI carbs improve diabetes control
Low GI diets increase the body's sensitivity to insulin
Low GI diets help people lose and control weight

Should you eat only low GI food at every meal?Here some important tips you should know if you're interested to change your diet.According to University of Sydney research,the effect of a low GI food carries over to the next meal, reducing its glycemic impact. This applies to breakfast eaten after a low GI dinner the previous evening or to a lunch eaten after a low GI breakfast. This unexpected beneficial effect is called the "second meal effect". But don't take this too far, however. They recommend that you aim for at least one low GI food per meal. While you will benefit from eating low GI carbs at each meal, this doesn't have to be at the exclusion of all others. So enjoy baking your own bread or occasional treats. And if you combine high GI bakery products with protein foods and low GI carbs such as fruit or legumes, the overall GI value will be medium.

Does the GI increase with serving size?The GI always remains the same, even if you double the amount of carbohydrate in your meal. This is because the GI is a relative ranking of foods containing the "same amount" of carbohydrate. But if you double the amount of food you eat, you should expect to see a higher blood glucose response - ie, your glucose levels will reach a higher peak and take longer to return to baseline compared with a normal serve.

Is a low GI diet suitable for vegetarians?The range of protein and carb intake that is healthy is fairly broad - as a vegetarian you will inevitable have a higher carb intake and slightly lower protein intake. This makes the GI important for you but easy to adapt if you choose wholegrain cereal products and legumes as your carbohydrate base.The GI only applies to foods containing significant amounts of carbohydrate. Most vegetables have small amounts of carbohydrate and those that provide more usually have a low GI, with the exception of potatoes. You can therefore tuck into your veggies without considering the GI for every one.

Main problem for small and medium bakery business

In most develop country we can see there are much small and medium type of bakery business running compare to big or large bakery production.Bakery business were grouped in food and beverage (f&b) industries.In present time, this economy catastrophe doesn't hurt much for f&b industries.It almost doesn't give any effect at all.Why?First of all when it comes to something about food or daily needs or services,government will try their best to keep it at low price so people still can get it.People do eat everyday,no matter how hard the economy be,they still need to eat.Can you imagine if one day when you go to the market and there is no bread or the price is too high that you can't afford to buy?This will cost unrest among the people and will causes much more problem to the government.

After being long time in this industries,i think the main problem for small and medium bakery business in Malaysia is not at the material cost or production cost,but its in man power source.For example in my country,employer can acquire cheap labour cost from foreign workers.Compare to local workers,their pay are much more higher than the foreign workers.There are pros and cons to this fact.In my experience,local workers were lack in disciplines and attitude.However,communication with them much more easier compare to foreign worker.I can trained and teach any new local workers how to make decent bread and make them understand how the entire production running in less than two weeks but for foreign workers that usually doesn't speak fluent English or Malays it can takes more than a month.

The problem with local workers is they're always doesn't give 100% commitment in their job.Or at least i can say,every workers should try to give their best at any job given.They should try to love their job instead of work just to get pay for it.When we enjoy our job,this can make our life more easier and cheerful.For examples,I'm actually graduate from computer networking degree but when i feel its hard for me to get decent job in this field,i think i should learn another different skills to add my value.Although this making bread & pastry skill doesn't related to each other,but i like to know how to make it.So i improved my skill and knowledge in this bakery industries until i can master it for myself.

I can say that i prefer working with foreign workers because they're actually come here to my country to earn money to feed their family back home.So they're more aware at their responsibilities and always work hard.But something that i don't like with foreign workers is they're too depend on each other.They're more likely to work in a group amongst them and this i can say "dangerous" for the company.Why is that?Let me give you one usual scenario:
Let say you manage or supervise medium bakery shop.You employ 3 foreign workers from Bangladesh.They're new to your country, doesn't speak fluent English,and know nothing about making bread or never work with its ingredients.First of all,you need to trained them to mix,shape and baked the bread.In the mean time,they need to learn memorise the name of the bread they make.They need to know exact ingredient and measurement for each type of bread and how to group them.Well like i said earlier,this learning process can take more than a month depend on their capability to adapt new knowledge.There are no problem if each of them work hard or show their effort to learn by any mean.But the problem occurs if one of them not given attention,or doesn't show interest to learn harder or in other word,lazy.When you try to fix this problem by acting straight in order to disciplined this worker,or the last result you fired the lazy one,there is 90% chances that another 2 of his friend will follow him to quit the job.When this happen,you now realise that all effort you give to teach and trained these 3 workers are useless.

This type of problem actually happen in most bakery shop in my country.The employer need to decide whether to employ locals or foreign worker.Both of them have pros and cons.The employer need to choose either low or high cost worker they need,but the stability in production is more critical for any business survival.Yes,what i can conclude here is having foreign worker will bring more stability in production but it'll need more patient and effort to make it successful choices.

Articles: Nourfadly80
Website: http://breadpastry.blogspot.com