Glycemic Index Diet

Posted: Nov 12, 2010 |Comments: 0 |

The Glycemic Index is a nutrition concept that can help you sort out the pros and cons of carbohydrates. It is a comparative guide to the rise in insulin levels that occurs after eating carbohydrates.

Low to moderate glycemic index carbs produce a small but steady rise in insulin levels (healthy) as opposed to high glycemic index carbs that produce a large and rapid rise in insulin levels (unhealthy).

The real reason is that the glycemic index of foods is all about carbohydrates. Meats and other proteins are not listed on the index because they raise your blood sugar so slowly that they don't make a measurable difference to your blood sugar over the first hour or two after eating.

The glycemic index, however, has a number of practical problems. For one, it fails to truly categorize foods according to their impact on glycemic effect because it doesn't consider the amount of a food that we tend to eat at one time. A good example of this is a carrot versus a Snickers bar.

Glycemic Load and diet...it almost seems wrong to have those two words in the same sentence. For an increasing number of people, Glycemic Load is becoming associated with good nutrition, fat loss and increased, sustained energy. There are a number of other very positive affects of low Glycemic Load eating habits.


But assigning numbers to different foods based on their glycemic effect just happens to create a scaled list of foods that ends up being a very useful tool for people dealing with obesity and other health issues, as well. That's because simply maintaining a low-glycemic index diet tends to guide people toward healthier eating and weight loss, even when that is not their specific goal.

With the rise of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, the way your body handles carbohydrates has become an important issue. It seems advantageous for most people to include lower glycemic carbs more often than the higher glycemic ones. The reason for this is that the speed and amount of glucose entering your blood has an effect on insulin levels, and insulin levels have a lot to do with the way you feel and how much fat you store.

The glycemic index of glucose is arbitrarily set at 100. The ratings of other foods are determined as follows. First, researchers calculate a portion size for the food to supply 50 g. of carbohydrates. Next, they give that amount of the food to at least eight to ten people and measure the blood sugar response.

The core difference between them is that the index measures how fast foods are digested by our system and how fast they are converted into glucose or simple sugar, while the load is the measurement how much carbohydrate there is per serving size of food. Though they uniquely differ in function, yet they work together in helping us select healthy portions of food per serving (GL) and by giving us accurate idea how to identify bad carbohydrates from the good ones (GI).

Raw vegetables are considered low glycemic foods and have low a glycemic load because of the fiber present. The cooking and processing of vegetables raise the glycemic number easily and then are considered high glycemic foods. But many vegetables like asparagus, bell peppers, kale, cucumber, tomatoes, fennel, cabbage, cauliflower are not listed as low glycemic foods.

While the GI does have some useful applications, such as the use of high GI foods or drinks for post workout nutrition and the strong emphasis on low GI foods for those with blood sugar regulation problems, there are flaws in strictly using the glycemic index as your only criteria to choose carbs on a weight loss program.


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