The purpose of bread before meals is to cleanse the palate… However, white bread is a high-glycemic index food with a glycemic index of over 90, so people who need to control their blood sugar should be careful.
If you go to a Western restaurant, they serve warm bread and olive oil mixed with balsamic vinegar before your meal. If you eat it before the main meal, you will be full, so why do they serve bread?
In fact, bread before a meal is not simply for filling up the stomach. It is provided to cleanse the taste buds before a meal so that restaurant guests can properly taste the main dish. There are taste buds on the tongue, which are made up of up to 100 taste receptors. Taste buds recognize the taste molecules of the ingredients that make up the food and send signals to the brain. This is the reason why we can recognize the taste of certain foods when we eat them.
Crackers and baguettes made with minimal ingredients such as flour and water are excellent for cleaning the mouth.
There are also research results that show that bread before a meal acts as a gustatory cleanser. A research team from the Department of Food Science and Technology at The Ohio State University in the United States analyzed the gustatory cleansing effects of various foods. After having subjects eat sweet (jelly beans), bitter (coffee), oily (smoked sausage), astringent (tea), spicy (spicy tortilla chips), cool (mint), and lingering flavors (apple sauce), they rinsed their mouths with crackers, water, lemonade, milk, and chocolate. As a result, crackers were found to have the best cleansing effect.
The same goes for non-stimulating bread, baguettes, and other foods made with minimal ingredients such as flour and water. The analysis is that when you chew tasteless bread, saliva comes out of your mouth, and the taste molecules remaining in your mouth go down your throat with the bread, providing a cleansing effect.
Be careful with white bread, which has a high glycemic index… If you eat it on an empty stomach, there is a high risk of a sudden increase in blood sugar levels.
Like this, if you eat it before a meal, it is effective in stimulating your appetite, but you should be careful because it can rapidly increase your blood sugar if you eat too much. The glycemic index of white bread and morning bread served before a meal is 92~95. The glycemic index is a numerical value that indicates the degree to which blood sugar rises after eating food. Foods with a glycemic index of 55 or less are considered low-glycemic foods. Foods with a glycemic index of 55~69 are medium-glycemic foods, and foods with a glycemic index of 70 or more are considered high-glycemic foods.
If you eat foods with a high glycemic index on an empty stomach, your blood sugar level will rise and you will feel even hungrier. After eating bread, our body secretes insulin to lower the high blood sugar level. When the insulin action is over, the blood sugar level will drop, but the brain can interpret this situation as a sudden lack of energy. As a result, the appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin continues to be secreted, making you hungry and leading to overeating, which has a negative effect on blood sugar and obesity.
To prevent a sudden rise in blood sugar, it is helpful to eat plenty of balsamic vinegar when eating bread before a meal. Balsamic vinegar moves slowly to the small intestine and is absorbed slowly in the body, causing blood sugar to rise slowly after a meal. The acetic acid in vinegar has the effect of breaking down lactic acid and fat. When lactic acid in the body is broken down, fatigue is relieved, and when fat is broken down, it is beneficial for weight control.
If you are on an empty stomach, it is good to eat a small amount of bread before a meal and drink plenty of lukewarm water. Drinking lukewarm water on an empty stomach replenishes the body’s moisture and gives you a feeling of fullness, which can prevent overeating.
If you want to be healthy, it is better to eat vegetables or nuts rather than fasting for a long time. Vegetables are rich in dietary fiber, so they are effective in filling up vitamins and minerals while maintaining a feeling of fullness. Nuts eaten before meals can help maintain blood sugar health. According to a study conducted by the National Diabetes Foundation of India, when people aged 18 to 60 with pre-diabetes ate 20g of almonds before lunch and dinner for 3 months, 23.3% of the group that ate almonds returned to normal blood sugar levels.
〈3-line summary〉
Acts as a gustatory cleanser that cleanses the mouth so that you can properly taste the food
The glycemic index of white bread used as pre-meal bread is over 90, making it a high glycemic index food.
To prevent a sudden spike in blood sugar, eat plenty of balsamic vinegar and drink lukewarm water.
(Healthy Food Information Room, Healthy Food Room, is a corner that deals with questions about frequently encountered foods. A reporter who majored in food and nutrition will easily explain nutritional information that is often overlooked in everyday life.)
Source: kormedi.com
