Snacking for Health and Weight Loss.

People fall into two categories when it comes to snacking, those who do and those who are very much against eating between meals. Recently I read about two pieces of research where obese people saw improvements in their weight, blood sugar balance and felt less hungry when eating the same number of calories over six meals.

Interestingly I gave a talk to a diabetes group a few weeks ago and during the talk I went through ‘A day in the life of your low blood sugar’ from an article in my Vegetarian Cooking Without book. As people who have diabetes have high blood sugar this may seem a strange thing to do. The chart lists symptoms that you may experience during the day and night if your blood sugar is low. I asked the group if there was anyone who didn’t have any of the symptoms listed. There wasn’t one person in a group of 25 people who didn’t have any symptoms, whereas when I give talks to other groups there are normally a few who are symptom free.

So diabetes is as much a problem with low blood sugar it is with high blood sugar which is exactly what I expected. I believe that all people with diabetes start off with low blood sugar which leads to cravings for the wrong type of food such as sugar and simple carbohydrates which in turn leads to weight gain and eventually diabetes. In order to right this problem my suggestion is to eat snacks between meals of low glycaemic, healthy food such as an apple and a few nuts, 2-3 oatcakes with nut butter or hummus, or a bowl of sugar free popcorn. This supports the blood sugar preventing it from going too high or too low and preventing cravings when it drops. By snacking in this way it is possible to keep blood sugar in a healthy range and lose weight.