Sugar infographics now available to download
Healthcare professionals can now download a series of infographics highlighting the impact of food on blood glucose levels.
Endorsed by NICE, the resources have been created by Dr David Unwin, a doctor from Southport known as the Low-Carb GP, to visually illustrate the “glycaemic consequences of dietary choices”.
They are based on the glycaemic index, which ranks the various carbohydrates in foods to help predict the effect on blood sugar as they are digested down into glucose, compared to a meal of pure glucose itself.
Dr Unwin said: “Using the glycaemic index can sometimes cause confusion because the index whilst it ranks the different and specific carbohydrates in our foods fails to compensate for the density of each carbohydrate in a particular portion of food. For this we need to calculate the glycaemic load, which is usually given as grams of glucose for a specified portion of the food in question.
“Patients are not very familiar with, say 10 grams of glucose, so we found it better to re-interpret the glycaemic load in terms of the far more familiar 4g teaspoon of table sugar. So, a 80g portion of broccoli is in fact only equivalent to 1/5 of a teaspoon of sugar (as it’s mainly water) whereas a banana in terms of glycaemic load is equivalent to nearly 6 teaspoons of sugar (see below). In this way we have produced these seven NICE endorsed infographics to help patients understand the glycaemic consequences of their dietary choices.”
Sugar infographic series |
Common Foods – Sugar Equivalent Infographic
Fruits – Sugar Equivalent Infographic Cereals – Sugar Equivalent Infographic Breads – Sugar Equivalent Infographic |
Earlier this month, Dr Unwin and the infographics reached the last stages of the 2019 NICE Shared Learning Award.
There were 68 entries from organisations across the NHS, local authorities, social care, and the voluntary and private sectors and organisers said this year the “standard was extremely high”.
Dr Unwin has worked closely with Diabetes Digital Media (DDM) to promote the benefits of the low-carb approach. DDM launched the Low Carb Program on World Diabetes Day in 2015 and now more than 400,000 people have registered on the digital platform, which research leads to reductions in HbA1c, weight, de-prescription for type 2 diabetes medications and even reversal of the condition.