WESLACO – A Rio Grande Valley mother says she’s careful when preparing dinner for her two sons.

Maria Contreras says in her house, the boys first eat dinner and then they get to drink juice.

She says with an increase in cases of children with diabetes, she opts to do some things a certain way.

Type 2 diabetes starts when you overdo it on processed carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are foods like pasta, bread, syrup and bananas. The more processed it is, the more finely it’s ground and the more it spikes your blood sugar.

The glycemic index measures just how high they raise it on a scale of 0 to 100. There are three classifications for GI:

• Low – 55 or less
• Moderate – 56 to 69
• High – 70 +

For example, a carrot carries a GI of about 40. A banana, which is sweeter, has a GI of about 50. But French fries, which are filling and soft, are about 63.

White bread, which is just made up of ground up wheat, has 75.

Then there’s the blood sugar-spiking boss: raw sugar. It’s in candy and sweet things like sodas.

The glycemic index of sucrose is 65 but when you eat sweets, you’re getting a lot of sugar at once. This also makes a difference.

“Anything that’s processed is usually going to spike it up because there are no nutrients to really help keep that sugar controlled. So it’s all sugar, pretty much,” says H-E-B Border Region Dietitian Andie Gonzalez.

The more ground up it is, the more boiled, chopped, chewier and softer it is. And the sweeter it is, the more likely it will cause a spike in your blood sugar.

This is what makes fiber the best thing on the glycemic index. The more fiber on your nutrition facts, the better. You may find it less appetizing than your go-to foods but balance it with what you like to eat already.

“I don’t like to say don’t. Just because a lot of times when you deprive somebody of a certain food item, they’re most likely going to eat, maybe binge and whatnot, right?” says Gonzalez.

The more fiber we eat, the less likely the changes we’ll get diagnosed with diabetes.