~ Delinquency is caused by food. ~ ② 

Rice is better than bread for breakfast.
Let’s compare how the blood-sugar level changes when having western-style meals, bread, and Japanese-style meals, rice.  What kind of physiological differences can be seen in students at school in the following three cases:  (Case 1) breakfast of a cup of coffee with sugar in it with pasty and a fried egg, (Case 2) breakfast of rice, miso-soup, boiled vegetables, grilled fish, and dried seaweed, a typical Japanese-style breakfast, and (Case 3) breakfast of a cup of coffee with sugar only.

I carried out a research test on seven college students to record their blood-sugar levels depending on their eating styles over three weeks.  I asked them to take rice for the first week, bread for the second week, and sugar for the third week.  The in-take calories for rice, bread, and sugar are all the same.  The result showed a striking high level of blood-sugar in 30 minutes when taking sugar.  But it was also found that the blood-sugar level also drops far lower (50) than the lowest level (100) before taking sugar in only two hours.

This also applies to children.  If they have a cup of coffee or a glass of milk only for breakfast, they are more likely to become hypoglycemia in 2 hours.  During the classes, they may feel cold sweat, heavy heart beat, or lose concentration.  I’m sure they do not care for studying at all under such condition.  In fact, the school where student violence is an issue, you can easily find empty juice cans all over the school hallway because many students go out of school property with their indoor shoes on to buy soft drinks when a break between second and third classes comes.

Comparing rice with bread, the blood-sugar level seems to drop a little quicker when taking bread.  This slight difference is due to the different forms of flour and grains.  Flour can be digested and absorbed faster than grains so glucose gets taken into body from the intestine much faster than rice.  Therefore, when we eat bread for breakfast, our blood-sugar level goes back to the original low level in a couple of hours.  When applied this to school kids, they will still be longing for lunch time during classes.

Even from the scientific perspectives, traditional Japanese food is capable of keeping our blood-sugar level in a stable state longer than any other food.  Thanks to that, we are able to concentrate in our activities without thinking about food.  This is also the reasons why a typical Japanese-style breakfast is subject to be looked upon again.

The old-fashioned starchy snacks are recommended.
Now let’s see specifically what kind of food causes hypoglycemia.  They are hard candies, chocolates, ice creams, soft drinks, and others that contain a lot of white sugar.  Sugar is composed of glucose and fructose, but its composition is so simple that it’s easily absorbed into body and thus, the blood-sugar level shoots up.

Children in old days were barely given snacks between meals, maybe once a day.  Still, they were satisfied and played energetically until dinner time.  They were usually so hungry that they would eat full meal.  This was all due to the merits that starchy snacks between meals.  The old-fashioned starchy between meals, like roasted chest nuts, sweat potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, okonomi-yaki, parched minced rice, soybean flour candies, sesame seed rice cakes, takes time to digest and they can stabilize the blood-sugar level for a long time.  Those between meals contain much less sugar and salt than snacks found in recent times.  They were firmer requiring us to chew more.  They contained more fiber, vitamins, and energy.

As you may be thinking by now, the blood-sugar level has a close relationship with eating style of children these days.  Many children in recent days have blood-sugar levels that go up and down rapidly because they eat between meals more often and what they eat usually contain much sugar.  For our children’s health and to prevent them from being delinquent, I truly suggest that we pay more attention to the blood-sugar levels.