A glossary of the words you'll meet on a results sheet, in a headline, or in this kitchen. No target numbers anywhere: what the numbers should be is a conversation for your GP. What the words mean is something you're entitled to understand.
The big picture
Metabolic health. How well your body handles the food you eat: turning it into energy, keeping blood sugar in a comfortable range and managing cholesterol along the way. When it runs smoothly you notice it in ordinary life: energy that lasts through the afternoon, hunger that turns up at sensible times.
Metabolism. Not just how fast you burn calories. The whole web of processes behind your blood sugar, your energy, your hormones and the health of your heart.
Healthspan. The years you live in good health, as opposed to lifespan, the years you live. The aim is to make the two the same number.
Metabolic flexibility. The body's ability to switch between burning carbohydrate and burning fat depending on what's available. People who eat and move in a way that keeps blood sugar steady tend to keep this flexibility.
Blood sugar
Blood sugar (glucose). The sugar circulating in your blood, which every cell uses for energy. It rises after you eat and falls as it's used or stored.
Insulin. The hormone that moves glucose out of the blood and into cells. Made by the pancreas; released every time blood sugar rises.
Insulin resistance. When cells stop responding to insulin as readily, so the body makes more of it to do the same job. It builds quietly over years and sits behind many of the other terms on this sheet.
Prediabetes. The stage where blood sugar runs higher than ideal but below the line for type 2 diabetes. Highly responsive to how you eat and move; a diagnosis for your GP, a turnaround for the kitchen.
Spike and slump. The sharp rise in blood sugar after a fast-release meal and the dip that follows, felt as the mid-afternoon slump, the sudden hunger, the craving. The thing most of this kitchen is designed to smooth out.
Postprandial. After a meal. Your postprandial response is what your blood sugar and blood fats do in the hours after eating, which is where the day is actually lived.
HbA1c. Sugar sticks to red blood cells in proportion to how much has been circulating; HbA1c reads that coating. Because red cells live about three months, it's an average of your blood sugar over roughly twelve weeks, and it can't be flattered by a good breakfast on the morning of the test.
Fasting glucose. A snapshot of blood sugar after a night without food. One frame of the film.
Glycaemic index (GI). A lab scale of how fast a single food, eaten alone, raises blood sugar. Useful for understanding; less useful at the table, because almost nothing is eaten alone. A potato with butter and tuna is not the potato on the chart. That is why this kitchen teaches pairing and sequencing rather than GI tables.
Fructose. The sugar in fruit, honey and half of table sugar. Handled mainly by the liver, which turns a surplus into fat. The source matters: fructose arriving inside a whole apple, with its fibre and water, behaves differently from fructose in a syrup.
Blood fats and the heart
Triglycerides. The form in which the body stores spare energy. The most diet-responsive number on a standard blood test, and it rises with refined carbohydrate, sugar and alcohol more than with fat.
Cholesterol. A waxy substance every cell needs; the body makes most of it. The question is never cholesterol itself but how it's being carried around.
Lipoproteins (HDL and LDL). The packages that carry cholesterol and triglycerides through the blood. LDL carries cholesterol out to the tissues and, in excess, into artery walls; HDL carries it back to the liver. "Bad" and "good" are a doctor's shorthand for that.
Atherosclerosis. The slow narrowing and hardening of arteries as fat and cholesterol build up in their walls. The reason the blood-fat numbers matter.
Blood pressure. The force of blood against artery walls. "Hypertension" means it stays high. It rarely announces itself, it is sometimes called the “silent killer”, so it's worth measuring at home; less salt, more potassium-rich vegetables, less alcohol, more walking and better sleep all move it.
Waist-to-height. A tape measure round the middle tells you where fat is sitting, which the bathroom scales can't. Fat around the organs is the kind that disturbs metabolism.
Inflammation
Chronic inflammation. The immune system's low-level, long-running activation, as opposed to the useful short burst that heals a cut. Linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes and more; responds to the whole pattern of how you eat, move and sleep.
C-reactive protein (CRP). A protein the liver makes when the immune system is active, used as an inflammation marker. It rises with any infection, a cold included, so a single reading means little and the trend means more.
Advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Compounds formed when sugar bonds to proteins or fats, inside the body when blood sugar runs high, and in food that's charred or deep-fried. Gentle cooking (stews, soups, traybakes, braises) keeps them low.
Anti-inflammatory eating. Not a diet but a pattern: olive oil, oily fish, nuts, seeds, colourful vegetables, pulses, herbs and spices, and less of the food that comes in crinkly packets.
The liver
MASLD. Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, the new name for "non-alcoholic fatty liver". Fat building up in the liver, made from surplus sugar; now common, often silent, and highly responsive to the glucose levers above.
Liver enzymes (ALT, GGT). Enzymes that leak into the blood when liver cells are under strain. In someone who drinks little, a raised reading is often the first sign of fat in the liver.
The gut
Gut microbiome. The trillions of microbes living in your digestive tract. They eat what you can't, make compounds that reach the rest of the body, and are part of your blood sugar response.
Dysbiosis. An imbalance in those microbes, usually meaning less diversity. Linked to many conditions; the fix is mostly what you feed them.
Fibre. The part of plants you don't digest and your microbes do. Soluble or viscous fibre (oats, beans, aubergine, chia, psyllium) also slows how fast sugar reaches the blood: a gentle rise rather than a spike and a slump.
Short-chain fatty acids. What gut microbes make from fibre. They feed the gut lining, calm inflammation and signal to the rest of the body.
Prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics. Prebiotics are the food (fibre, especially from onions, garlic, leeks, pulses, oats). Probiotics are the residents (live microbes in kefir, yoghurt, sauerkraut, kimchi). Postbiotics are what the residents produce and leave behind. Fermented foods cover all three.
Fermented foods. Foods transformed by microbes: kefir, live yoghurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso. Regular intake is associated with a more diverse microbiome and lower inflammation markers.
How we eat here
Protein, fat and fibre (PFF). The three things on every MKD plate. Together they slow digestion, satisfy, and keep the rise in blood sugar gentle.
Sequencing. Vegetables and protein first, starch last. The same meal eaten in a different order produces a smaller rise in blood sugar.
Eating around movement. A short walk after a meal, or a meal timed after activity. Muscle is where glucose goes, and it takes it up without needing much insulin.
Body-led portions. No counting. Palm-sized protein, a hand of starch, plenty of plants, and attention to how you feel an hour later.
Ultra-processed food (UPF). Industrial formulations made from substances extracted from foods, with additives you wouldn't find in a home kitchen. If the label reads like a chemistry set rather than a recipe, it's a UPF, whatever the front of the packet claims.
Mediterranean pattern. The way of eating with the deepest evidence behind it: olive oil, vegetables, pulses, nuts, fish, modest dairy, meals eaten together. Adaptable to any culture.
DASH. A pattern designed for blood pressure: vegetables, fruit, pulses, less salt. Its lasting lesson is salt down, potassium up.
Sarcopenia. The loss of muscle with age, starting in the thirties and faster after the menopause or during illness. Protein at every meal and some form of resistance work are how you keep it.