One of the most common questions about the Slow Carb diet is around cheese and dairy products.
If you’d like to recap on content in the class, I’ve included the Deeper Dive into Rule #5 – Avoid Dairy Products below.
more thoughts about cheese
Given my love of cheese, and the fact that Gary Taubes allows it in moderation and Tim Ferriss is OK with cottage cheese, I wanted to get some more information.
I decided to ask my uncle, who specialises in obesity and diabetes, his thoughts on cheese.
And the response?
Within normal amounts, cheese is fine. Yay!
So cheese is back on the menu for me. Not every day, of course. But I’m enjoying a little here and there and feeling great!
white bean & onion bake
So if you’re keen to include a little cheese….
You might like to try out this wonderful white bean & onion bake, I posted about recently on Stonesoup.
deeper dive: rule #5. Avoid dairy products
milk & yoghurt
Unfortunately you should avoid yoghurt and milk except for cheat days because they contain lactose, or ‘milk-sugar’.
The reason for this is that while dairy products have a low glycemic index, meaning they don’t contain a lot of carbohydrate or cause a large spike in blood sugar. They have a high insulemic response, meaning they stimulate a large amount of insulin for the small amount of carbohydrate which is something we don’t want.
If you’re interested in reading up on dairy products and their insulemic response, there’s a scientific paper here which discusses a Swedish study.
cream
Cream does contain some carbohydrate, but of course much less than milk because of the higher fat content. So cream is allowed but try not to overdo it.
cheese
Cheese is a tricky one. While it does contain small amounts of carbohydrate, it varies from cheese to cheese. And the study above didn’t include cheese so I’m not certain whether the same high insulemic response applies to cheese.
Tim Ferriss recommends avoiding all dairy except, butter cream and cottage cheese. Gary Taubes allows cheese in limited quantities (up to 4oz a day or 115g – which seems like a fair bit of cheese to me!). To be safe I’ve kept all the recipe cheese-free.
But it’s up to you. You can either omit cheese until you’re happy with your weight and in weight maintenance mode OR eat cheese and if you’re happy with your weight loss, no problems. Then if you aren’t happy with your weight loss, you can ditch the cheese.
butter
Butter is fine and excluded in this rule because it is which is mostly fat and water.
back to Reclaim Your Waistline
Add to my Old Favourite Recipes