David Mendoza (website & blog) is one of the most prolific writers on the subject of living with diabetes. He’s been publishing on the Internet since the mid 1990s and I just recently found him again after losing track of his site several years ago.
Here’s what he has to say about Chana Dal:
Like most people with diabetes I seem to be on an endless quest for good-tasting food that won’t play havoc with my blood sugar levels. What I keep looking for is low-fat food packed with nutritious carbohydrates.The problem is that many foods high in carbohydrates send our blood sugar levels skyrocketing. But when I found the food of my dreams a couple of years ago, I ignored it because I had no idea what it was.
This food—chana dal—is practically unknown in the West, but is becoming available here too. Chana dal is a bean that comes from India, where they appreciate it very much.
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The glycemic index is about foods high in carbohydrates. Foods high in fat or protein don’t cause your blood sugar level to rise much. But the problem, many experts believe, is that people with diabetes should limit how much fat and protein they eat.
A lot of people still think that it is plain table sugar that people with diabetes need to avoid. The experts used to say that, but the glycemic index shows that even complex carbohydrates, like baked potatoes, can be even worse.
Gathering studies for my glycemic index page, a couple of years ago I stumbled on references in the professional literature to something called “Bengal gram dal.” I included it, although I didn’t know what it was.
Then, someone sent me e-mail asking about it. My initial reaction was to take Bengal gram dal out of the glycemic index, because the number was almost unbelievably low. It has almost no effect on your blood glucose level. This is something that is very important to anyone with diabetes and to many other people as well. Technically, it has one of the lowest indexes of any food on the glycemic index, 8 (where glucose = 100). Its index is 5 according to one study and 11 according to another.
(snip)
This bean looks just like yellow split peas, but is quite different because it doesn’t readily boil down to mush. It’s more closely related to garbanzo beans, or chickpeas. The differences are that chana dal is younger, smaller, split, sweeter, and has a much lower glycemic index. But you can substitute chana dal for garbanzo beans in just about any recipe.
Chana dal has now become a regular staple of our household. My wife and I both have diabetes, and we prize chana dal’s very low glycemic index. And we prize the wonderful taste just as much. We love chana dal prepared in several different ways, just like any other sort of bean.
If you’d like to read more about Chana dal, he’s got detailed availability information for both the United States and Canada.