If you eat the right grains for breakfast, such as whole-grain barley or rye, the regulation of your blood sugar is facilitated after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was previously not known that certain whole-grain products have this effect all day. This is due to a combination of low GI (glycemic index) and certain type of indigestible carbohydrates that occur in certain grain products. The findings are presented in a dissertation from the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University. The dissertation shows that even people who have had a breakfast low in GI find it easier to concentrate for the rest of the morning.

(Source: Tufts University, Health Sciences )Steady increases in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages over the last several decades, as well as rates of Type 2 diabetes mellitus, led nutritional epidemiologists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University and colleagues to explore the relationship between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and insulin resistance, a precursor to Type 2 diabetes. Their findings suggest that higher consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks, but not 100 percent fruit juice, may be associated with insulin resistance, even in otherwise healthy adults.

I just came back from our annual Blackberry Festival here in Lenoir, North Carolina.  The festival is named for those fresh dark morsels of goodness that show up in July of each year in the Southeast.  Having my appetite whetted for berries, I decided to do a little research on the benefits of July’s sweet harvest and share it with you.

The common blackberry is also called “bramble raspberry”; genus rubus, family rosaceae.  The five petal bloom on most varieties resembles the full bloom of the rose, thus rosaceae.  It is estimated that blackberries have been part of the human diet for 2500 years, yet it is considered a weed and invasive plant in some parts of the Pacific Northwest of the United States.  Did you know that: