Using GL to sort the good, the bad and the suicidal 120 Manny Noakes and Peter Clifton or the Low GI Diet by Jennie Brand- Miller. And that brings us back to carbohydrate. Carbohydrates come in many guises and are by far the largest food group. They range from the very healthy, as in lettuce, through to‘ suicide foods’ like doughnuts. I call foods that are high in both energy rich, highly processed carbohydrates and saturated fats suicide foods because eating them regularly is a form of slow suicide. I spend time in my workshops and groups on food choice as it relates to carbohydrate because I find that the fattening foods most people have problems with – their high sacrifice foods – nearly always are, or include, carbohydrates. As an exercise, each group member tells us about their high sacrifice foods( HSF) and, if they remember, how they came to be so attached to them. After I have gone around the group I ask people to notice just how many of the foods people listed were carbohydrates and how many were party or‘ special occasion’ foods. It is no coincidence that usually a person’ s HSF will be the food of special occasions – the sort of food found at a birthday party or a Sunday roast. In a typical group of eight members, six would identify carbohydrates that were regular party foods such as:
• Potato crisps or fries
• Chocolate and other sweets
• Cake and other baked carbs like brownies
• Biscuits or cookies
• White bread
• Ice-cream with topping / cones
• Soft drink Typically at least one member would describe HSFs that, rather than being party foods, were foods you would typically find in specialty restaurants or on special occasions like Sunday roasts or Christmas lunch.