The Rice

I wrote not so long ago about sleeping and not knowing how to fall asleep and the danger of having too much sugar before bed (causing me to be hyperactive 'til 4am or so--and not sleeping). Now, I love my carbs. Atkins can go spank himself far as I'm concerned. But...

I had noticed that I tended to be restless on nights when I had had a rice dish for dinner. After spending a year in Thailand as an exchange student, I love me some genuine Thai jasmine rice. It's genuinely aromatic, and it's fluffy, and it's tasty...good stuff. If you haven't had it (and it's not just that nasty long-grain rice from Texas, it's specifically "jasmine rice"--Trader Joe's has it), treat yourself.


I looked online to see if there was any info about rice and glycemic index, which is more usually important to diabetics, but I'm probably on my way to Type II anyway and it seemed like a relatively small thing to check for possibly improved sleep. This page soon appeared and I started scrolling down...For reference, the glycemic index roughly measures how hard food is going to hit your blood sugar level relative to glucose, the most common naturally occuring sugar and energy source, which is given a rating of 100. Cashew nuts? 22. A Mars Bar? 68. Skim milk 32, ice cream 61, Coca-cola 63,...

There are many kinds of rice and many ways to eat it (on the webpage given, it starts at food #272), and I'm reading through, and most kinds of rice are in the GI 40-70 range, so yeah, they're gonna cause a spike. But I keep scrolling until I see item #288:

Jasmine rice, white long grain, cooked in rice cooker

GI: 109

Ouch. That's worse than table sugar (#589, GI 60-65) or a doughnut (#12, GI 76).


Ah well, there's always basmati (#297, GI 58)...