Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, and you're listening to the Nutrition Diva

podcast. Welcome. This week we're talking about the so-called

Cracker Test and whether it can reveal the amount of

carbohydrate that you should be eating. Jenny writes, I recently heard about something called the Cracker Test.

Well, we did the test in our family and the Cracker did not get sweet for any of us. Apparently this means that we

should only eat 25% carbs. I'd love to hear your comments.

Okay, raise your hand if you know what the Cracker Test is. I first learned about it in high school biology as part of a unit on human digestion.

Digestion, we learned, begins in the mouth.

As you chew your food, it's mixed with saliva,

which contains an enzyme called amylase.

This enzyme helps to break large starch molecules down into smaller sugar molecules.

Now fortunately for those who don't chew very well, the digestion of starch digestion occurs in the mouth.

So even if you swallow that bite of bagel whole,

you're still going to digest most of it.

Meanwhile, back in high school,

the Cracker Experiment was a fun way to demonstrate the action of Salavary Amelace, and here's

how to do it at home. You take a bite of an unsalted, saltine cracker, and then you chew it without swallowing. As you chew, you may perceive a subtle shift in the taste as some of the starch in the cracker is converted into sugar by

salivary amylase enzymes. Hey you know learning is always more fun when it

involves snacks. But now the cracker Test is taking the internet by storm. It's being promoted as a way

to determine how much carbohydrate your body can tolerate. According to proponents, the length of time that it takes for

the cracker to start tasting sweet in your mouth determines the percentage of

carbohydrate that your diet should contain. The longer it takes for the

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