The Myth: Idli is healthy food.
The Fact: Idli is fattening food.
If the fat in our food is the sole cause of body fat, we should all have been slim, because we have banned the ghee from our diets and turned cooking oil reduction into a fine art. The pride with which our Mega Star unveiled his oil less dosa, the fervour with which the media highlighted it and the zeal with which we appreciated it highlights our thought process of making ‘fat’ the villain. If you want proof of it, see the spread at any marriage party – ghee is either absent or when present, has very few takers. Has this anti-ghee mania made us slim?
No, because fat or even cholesterol in Indians, who mainly eat grains, comes from the blood sugar spikes caused by fermented grain contained in foods like Idlis.
Carbohydrates in our diet enter the blood as glucose, also called sugar. Ideally, the glucose should enter the blood at a uniform rate until the next meal, which ideally has to be after every 4 hours. Removing the fiber, as in the case of white rice, makes the glucose enter the blood faster and fermenting accelerates it even further. So, blood sugar Blood Sugar levels, after eating idlis rise a lot within the first one or two hours, depending on whether they are eaten with fat or not and fall to very low levels thereafter. To see this effect for myself, I had measured my Blood Sugar levels after eating Idlis with fat laden coconut and pudina chutney. The readings are presented below. Any one can repeat this experiment, because, thanks to the ubiquitous occurrence of diabetes in our society, glucometers are available in most households.
Explanation of the above results:
- Idlis + coconut chutney: Blood Sugar spiked to 148 at 2nd hour and dropped to 99 at 4th hour.
- Idlis + Pudina chutney: Calories are less, but Blood Sugar spiked at 1st hour and then fell to HG levels after 3rd hour.
- Bananas: Blood Sugar was uniform without a spike, but HG occurred after the 3rd hour.
- Bananas + Fit for Life Curd (FFLC): Some of the carbohydrate calories have been replaced with fat rich FFLC. This resulted in uniform Blood Sugar levels throughout the 4 hours and there was no HG after the 3rd hour.
- Pesarattu + Ginger Chutney: This supplied uniform Blood Sugar over next 4 hours without any spikes. The reason being the low Glycemic Index of the Pesarattu, which is explained below:
Glycemic Index: The food supplies energy to the cells by entering the blood as glucose, also called sugar. Different foods enter the blood at different rates or put differently, different foods raise the blood sugar at different rates. GI ranks the foods by the rate at which they raise the blood sugar (BS) level. Higher the GI value of the food, the faster it raises the Blood Sugar level and vice versa. Understanding GI can reduce medical bills.
Click here to see the GI values of more Indian foods.
Pesarattu is the slowest in raising the blood sugar level because of the following reasons:
- It is made from whole grains, which are ground and are relatively coarse when compared to idli batter.
- It is not fermented.
- It contains less than 1% of refined white rice, which has high GI value even without fermentation
- Oil used in its preparation reduces the GI value
Why does the Mega Star benefit from his patentable oil-less dosa, but sedentary people like us do not benefit at all?
The spike in the Blood Sugar level means excess sugar in the blood. As every diabetic knows, the excess Blood Sugar is toxic. So our body pumps in additional insulin to move the excess Blood Sugar into muscles, if possible, or dump it into the belly fat, if there is no place in the muscle. In sedentary people, the muscles are always filled with energy, so idlis end up as belly fat. But for people who exercise vigorously, muscles have a place for energy, so an insulin spike caused by excess Blood Sugar helps in building the muscle instead of fat. For your information, bodybuilders take insulin injections to build muscle. So insulin spikes are fattening in sedentary people while they build muscles in vigorously exercising people. Note that the vigorous exercise is much more than shaking the leg in the Gym.