Karatay diet: High-protein foods in breakfast enhance the metabolism

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Although Dr. Canan Karatay recommends eating foods with a low glycemic index (GI), she also warns that consuming large portions of low-GI foods can cause “high glycemic load.”

Glycemic load (GL) estimates the impact of carbohydrate consumption on the body, using the glycemic index and taking into account the amount of carbohydrates consumed. GL is a GI-weighted measure of carbohydrate content. For instance, watermelon has a high GI, but a typical serving of watermelon does not actually contain much carbohydrate, so the glycemic effect of eating it (and therefore its GL) is low. Whereas a GI is defined for each type of food, GL can be calculated for any size serving of a food, an entire meal, or an entire day’s meals.

Karatay says in her book that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and a breakfast that includes high-protein foods and healthy fat, such as that found in homemade butter, enhances the metabolism by 30 percent for 12 hours after breakfast. “The metabolic enhancement after eating a healthy breakfast can help to burn as many calories as a four- or five-kilometer jog.”

Therefore, eggs are indispensible at breakfast, according to Karatay. “But eggs should not be hard-boiled. When a grayish green color is seen around the egg yolk this means it has lost its high-protein value and become a source of trans [unsaturated] fats. This is detrimental to cardiac health, whereas a soft- or medium-boiled egg is not. We should avoid high heat when preparing eggs,” she says.

Karatay suggests eating two eggs daily at breakfast. She claims eggs laid by hens fed on natural feed and living in a natural environment do not increase blood cholesterol, but instead help to reduce blood cholesterol, referring to Malcolm Kendrick’s book “The Great Cholesterol Con.”