What Is the Best Swallow for a Diabetic in Nigeria?

Swallow is not going anywhere, and it should not have to.

It is what the family gathers around, it is what you were raised on, and no honest answer starts by telling you to give it up.

So let us ask a better question. Every swallow turns into sugar once you eat it, and none of them is free.

What makes one different from another is how fast that sugar reaches your blood, and on that, some swallows treat you far better than others.

Two of them raise your sugar more slowly than the rest. The first is amala made from unripe plantain flour, which is the gentlest one that has been measured.

The second is oat swallow, and it is the only one on this page you can eat on its own. After those two, amala made from yam flour is the best of the swallows we eat every day.

The two that push your sugar up fastest are wheat swallow and fufu.

Nobody is banning them. But with those two, the size of the ball is no longer a small matter. It is the whole thing.

Before you go and change everything in your kitchen, understand this. The difference between the best swallow and the worst one is real, and it is worth having.

But it is smaller than the difference between a fist-size ball eaten with good soup, and a big mould of that same swallow eaten alone. Choosing well helps you. Eating the right size helps you more.

Which swallow is good for diabetes? All 14, ranked

The score below is the glycaemic index. It is a number from 0 to 100 that tells you how fast a food turns into sugar in your blood.

Anything from 1 to 55 is slow, and that is where you want to be. From 70 upwards is fast, and that is where you have to be careful. The Cleveland Clinic sets out the bands here in plain words.

These are not numbers borrowed from a foreign country. Researchers in Makurdi fed the four commonest swallows to Nigerians, including people who are living with diabetes, and measured what their blood actually did afterwards.

Here are the swallows, starting with the one that raises your sugar most gently and ending with the one that raises it fastest.

• Amala made from unripe plantain flour scored 52.8. It is the only swallow that comes in under 55, so it is the only one that is truly gentle on your sugar.

• Oat swallow also comes in under 55. It is the only swallow on this page you can eat on its own.

• Amala made from yam flour scored 69.3. That is just below 70, so it sits right at the edge without crossing over.

• Cocoyam fufu lands in the middle, between 56 and 69.

• Pounded yam scored 81, which has crossed the line into the fast ones.

• Eba, made from garri, scored 84.

• Tuwo dawa, the sorghum swallow, scored 85.3.

• Tuwo masara, the corn swallow, scored 86.8.

• Fufu, also called akpu, scored 97.

• Wheat swallow scored 97.4, the fastest of them all.

Lafun, starch, tuwo shinkafa and semovita all score above 70 as well, which puts them among the fast ones with eba and fufu.

We do not have a measured Nigerian number for every single one of them, and we would rather tell you that plainly than invent a number to fill the gap.

Two things on that list surprise almost everybody. Let us take them one after the other.

Is wheat swallow good for diabetes? This is the big surprise

Wheat swallow is known everywhere as the healthy one.

Many people have switched to it believing they have solved the problem, and plenty of them are paying more money for it every week.

If that is you, nothing here is a reason to lose heart. It can be corrected, and it was never your fault.

The measured number for wheat flour dough is 97.4. That is the fastest swallow on the list. It is not better than eba. It is worse than eba, and it is worse than pounded yam.

The confusion comes from bread. Whole wheat bread is better than white bread, and that part is true.

But wheat swallow is not bread and it is not the grain either. It is flour, ground very fine, mixed with hot water and turned into a soft dough. Fine flour cooked into a soft dough turns into sugar very quickly. The name on the packet does not change what happens inside your blood.

Semovita and semolina swallow are in the same place, for the same reason. They are also wheat, ground fine.

If you moved to wheat swallow because somebody told you it was the safe one, you have done nothing wrong. You were only told something that is not true.

What matters now is the size of the ball and what you put beside it, and that is the same for wheat as it is for every other swallow on your table.

What is the best swallow for a diabetic patient?

Amala made from unripe plantain flour. In a study of unripe plantain flour meals, it measured 52.8. That is under 55, which makes it the one swallow that does not push your sugar up quickly.

Now here is the part that catches almost everybody. Boiled unripe plantain, the one people swear by, is a completely different food from plantain flour.

Boiled unripe plantain measures 89, which is high enough to send your sugar up fast. Drying the plantain and grinding it into flour changes the starch inside it. Same plant, different food, and a very different answer.

So the swallow made from the flour is gentle on your sugar, and the boiled plantain on your plate is not, even though both came from the same bunch.

This is the most repeated mix-up about plantain in Nigeria. If it has caught you before, you are not alone at all.

Oat swallow is the other one worth knowing. It is the only swallow on our list that is safe to eat on its own, and you can have it about three times in a week instead of two.

But the same warning follows oats, and it is the warning running through this whole blog. Rolled oats score 55, so they release their sugar slowly.

Instant oats, the kind that cook in one minute, have been measured at 79. That is well past 70, which puts them among the foods that push your sugar up fast. The oats went into a machine and came out as a different food.

So if you are making oat swallow, use the plain rolled kind, not the quick sachet.

Every other swallow, including the two above, still has a size and a count that keeps it safe.

How much swallow can a diabetic eat?

One ball, the size of your closed fist. That is about half a cup of the cooked swallow, roughly 100g. About two times in a week for the swallows that scored above 70, and about three times a week for oat swallow, plantain amala and cocoyam fufu.

Look at your closed fist. That is the size. It is smaller than most people expect, and after about one week your eye will know it on its own.

The reason it matters is the second ball. The first one, eaten with good soup, is something most people manage well. The second one comes while your sugar is still rising from the first, and it lands on top of a rise that has not finished. Very few people are ever told this.

That is why so many decide they have failed, when the truth is that nobody ever gave them the number.

It is also why the ranking matters less than people expect, and that is the good news. A fist-size ball of eba with vegetable soup and fish will treat you better than a big mould of plantain amala eaten alone.

You do not need to go searching for a special swallow. The one you already cook at home can work, once you know the size.

What should you eat swallow with?

A proper vegetable soup, and fish, chicken, or an egg. Every time, whichever swallow you chose.

The good news is that this is already how we eat. Efo riro, edikang ikong, ewedu, okra and an egusi with plenty of vegetables inside it are the very soups that do this work, and they are on the table most weeks anyway.

Nobody is asking you to start cooking a strange kind of food. Only to make sure the soup truly has plenty of vegetables in it, and that fish, chicken or an egg is in the bowl.

This has been measured here in Nigeria. When a starch is eaten inside a full meal, with vegetables and body-building food beside it, the sugar reaches your blood far more slowly than when that same starch is eaten alone.

Vegetables carry the rough part of food, and fish, chicken and egg are body-building food. Both of them slow your stomach down, so the sugar enters slowly and steadily instead of rushing in at once.

The soup helps you a lot. What it cannot do is cancel the size. A big ball of swallow inside good soup is still a big ball of swallow. Size first, soup second, and the two of them together is where you want to be.

Is swallow bad for cholesterol, blood pressure or your kidneys?

Plenty of people are not managing diabetes alone. They are managing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or their kidneys at the same time, and almost nobody answers this question for them.

The swallow itself may not cause issues. The trouble is usually what sits beside it. Heavy palm oil, plenty of red meat, stockfish, salt and seasoning cubes can all be hard on your heart, your pressure and your kidneys, even on a day when your sugar is behaving very well.

So a food that is good for your sugar is not automatically good for the rest of your body.

That is why we put a separate warning on the foods that are hard on your pressure, your heart or your kidneys, and why that warning shows on the food itself when you check what is on your plate, so that nobody is left to work it out alone.

Four things people are commonly told, and what is actually true

None of these is your fault. Every one of them is advice that people repeat with full confidence, and they mean well when they say it.

1. You may have been told that wheat swallow and semovita are the safe ones. They are the two that raise your sugar fastest. If you switched, you were following the best information you had.

2. You may have been told that unripe plantain is always the safe choice. Plantain flour and boiled plantain are two different foods, and only the flour is gentle on your sugar.

3. You may have been told to change your swallow. That helps, but a better swallow in a bigger ball can still leave you worse off than before. The size is doing most of the work.

4. You may have been told that good soup makes the meal safe. The soup truly helps, and it earns you a better meal. It does not earn you a bigger ball.

How to stop guessing

Every food on your table has a number like these, a size that keeps it safe, and something beside it that slows it down. Nobody can keep all of that inside their head for hundreds of foods, and the answer changes completely once two foods join each other on one plate.

A ball of amala alone is one question. That same amala with another food beside it and a bottle of malt is a different question with a different answer. That is the gap GluFloat was built to close.

You type in the food, and you get a clear colour, the size, and what to eat it with. Then you put your whole plate together and watch it turn from red to green as you change it.

You can try it free, and it does not ask for a card, so you can test it on tonight's dinner before you decide anything.

Quick answers

Which swallow is best for a diabetic in Nigeria?

Amala made from unripe plantain flour, which scored 52.8 and is the gentlest one measured. Oat swallow is the only swallow you can eat on its own. After those two, amala made from yam flour is the best of the everyday swallows at 69.3.

Is wheat swallow good for diabetes?

No. Wheat flour dough measures 97.4, which raises your sugar faster than any other swallow measured. It is worse than eba, not better.

Is semovita good for diabetes?

Semovita is finely milled wheat, so it behaves like wheat swallow. Keep it to a fist-size ball about two times a week, with vegetable soup and fish, chicken or an egg.

Is amala good for diabetes?

Amala from yam flour scored 69.3, which is the best of the four common swallows measured in Makurdi. Amala from plantain flour is better still at 52.8.

Is fufu good for diabetes?

Fufu, also called akpu, scored 97. Only wheat swallow raises your sugar faster, so keep fufu to a fist-size ball about two times a week.

Is pounded yam better than eba?

Slightly. Pounded yam scored 81 and eba scored 84. The difference is small, and the size of the ball matters far more than which of the two you choose.

How much swallow can I eat at a time?

One ball the size of your closed fist, which is about half a cup of the cooked swallow, roughly 100g.