They ate their carbs in the form of beans vegetables and whole cereal grains They ate their sugars in fibrous fruits

They ate their carbs in the form of beans, vegetables and whole cereal grains They ate their sugars in fibrous fruits and berries. But it’s the type of carbs that matter.”For over 10,000 years, our ancestors survived on a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet. However, Brand Miller is not a low-carb pusher; she advocates a high-carb diet, saying that at least 50 per cent of our energy should come from carbohydrates. “Carbohydrate stimulates the secretion of insulin more than any other component of food,” she says. No one ever said this was going to be easy…)Professor Jennie Brand Miller from the University of Sydney is a world authority on the glycaemic index, and author of 150 books on the subject.

Basmati rice, too, has a low GI because of the structure of its starch. (Actually, it is incorrect to lump pasta in with these, if pasta is made from semolina, it has a low GI because semolina is made from large particles of cracked-wheat endosperm that are digested more slowly. In essence, this is why those low-carb diets tell you not to eat bread, rice, pasta or potatoes. Anything below 55 is considered low, and will give you a slow, steady rise in blood sugar; between 55-70 is intermediate; above 70 is high and you’ll probably feel full very quickly and then crashingly hungry again (sound familiar?).It’s probably not a surprise to learn that jelly beans have a GI of 80 But guess what has a GI of 76? Brown rice. The ratings range from 1 to 100 (100 is glucose), and this is where the big surprises come in.

It is a system of working out how quickly carbohydrates are broken down, digested and raise blood-sugar levels and thereby stimulate insulin production (insulin is produced by the pancreas to bring blood-sugar levels down again). The glycaemic index (GI).The glycaemic index (I warn you, GI diets will be the new craze of 2002 – Kylie already follows a low GI diet) was developed 22 years ago by a professor of nutrition at the university of Toronto. This is because, so the theory in the low-carb diet books goes, energy not used from sugar is stored as fat more readily than that from protein or even fat itself.But in researching these diets, I came upon something else that was to make the hugest difference to the way I ate. Fat was no longer the big enemy; carbohydrates, or rather what the body breaks them down into – sugars – were. Nutrition tables on the back of packets were only checked for the fat and calorie count Wasn’t that all that mattered?Apparently not The buzz word in weight loss now was “low-carb”. Food had, over the years, simply become food that made me feel virtuous or guilty.

So, I decided to approach the problem scientifically, because I realised that I had no idea, not really, of the nutritional content of my food. But still, here I was weighing what I should weigh if I were on the scales holding a toddler. And to do this I had to be humble and realise that I had to Do Something Different I hated diets, the thought of diets, people on diets. It sounds dramatic, but it all came on so slowly that I put it down to just one of those things that happen as you get older.However, in true western style, I was more concerned with losing the weight than addressing any of those other problems. “People don’t plan ahead, then they get hungry and grab something really quick.” It also meant that I had what I came to call my low blood-sugar level tantrums (madness for short) when I regressed to being a petulant child if I was hungry My stomach was always bloated, my periods were haywire.