The Glycemic Index: Good Carbs, Bad Carbs

If you’re one of those people who can’t handle all the counting, tracking, adding, and graphing that some diets require, you might find refuge in a simple numerical scale: the glycemic index. On the other hand, you may find it another maddening way to complicate the simple act of eating.

The glycemic index is a measure of the quality of carbohydrate foods. It’s kind of like good carbs/bad carbs, depending on how they affect your blood sugar. Although not new, it began to receive a lot of publicity when the anti-carb movement took hold.

Here’s how it works: On the glycemic index, pure glucose is arbitrarily assigned a score of 100; it doesn’t mean anything in particular; it’s just a fixed benchmark of how it has affected your blood sugar about two hours after eating. Then all other foods on the index are given a number relative to glucose and its effect on blood sugar.

Foods with a low ratio generally break down slowly and do not cause drastic fluctuations in blood sugar. Foods with a high index usually do. For example, green peas have an index of 39, while cornflakes have an index of 92.

Originally developed to help people, especially diabetics, control their blood sugar, the index includes mostly carbohydrate foods, because protein and fat do not have an immediate effect on blood sugar.

But assigning numbers to different foods based on their glycemic effect creates a scaled list of foods that ends up being a very useful tool for people with obesity and other health problems. This is because simply sticking to a low-glycemic diet tends to guide people toward healthier eating and weight loss, even when that’s not your specific goal.

Consider: Type II diabetes, as well as various cancers and cardiovascular disease, are highly correlated with high-index diets. There is plenty of research showing that lowering the overall glycemic index also reduces the risks of these problems.

This is because, almost by default, a low-index diet will include more fresh fruits and vegetables, more fiber, more dairy, all foods that offer essential nutrients, are more likely to be low in calories, and tend to keep the body satiated for longer. , enduring the next hunger spell. All of that usually adds up to weight loss, no matter the program.

Proponents of the index say it’s more useful than counting calories or grams of fat or carbohydrates, and actually offers a simplified approach to learning to eat better, but some experts caution that people shouldn’t worry too much about precise numbers. Instead, they urge people to pay attention to whether the foods they eat are low, medium, or high.

That’s because, as with any rule, there are exceptions to the fairly consistent physiological rules that underlie the index. For example, watermelon has a fairly high glycemic index, around 75, which is even higher than table sugar. Does that make it bad for you? No. Because despite its high index, watermelon actually has a pretty low glycemic load. That’s a measure based on the amount of food you’d actually eat, not just an arbitrary amount used in tests, like with the index.

The glycemic load of a food can be determined using the glycemic index of a food, divided by 100 and multiplied by the available carbohydrates you would eat. With most feeds, a low index is consistent with a low load, but there are peculiar exceptions. Of course, to find them, you’d have to do a lot of math again, and that’s not the way people normally eat.

That’s why doctors and nutrition experts encourage people who are trying to develop a healthy diet to avoid getting caught up in the numbers game and look more generally at the foods on the index, leaning toward those that rank higher. are at the lower end. Anything above 70 is considered a high index, 55 to 69 is medium, and below 55 are low glycemic index foods.

And look what’s in those groups: High-index foods include most breakfast cereals, white bread and other processed baked goods, most potatoes, ice cream, candy, and table sugar, your true Atkins nightmare.

The lowest index foods include cherries, grapefruit, broccoli, vegetables such as lentils and beans, most whole grain baked goods, and most dairy products. So even without counting calories or tracking specific index numbers, you can see that steering your diet toward the lower end of the index is sure to do you just fine.

We like to encourage patients to think about glycemic index and glycemic load as two more tools that can be helpful in developing healthier thinking and planning about eating habits.

One last thing to remember: There is no standardized list of glycemic indexes, and most indexes include brand-name items that people buy on a typical shopping trip, as well as more generic items like vegetables and fruit. This is one of the most useful aspects of listings, but only if you get one that relates to where you live.

If your average Southwest Floridian were to look at an index created in Australia, it wouldn’t be much help, because really, when was the last time you had a couple of Golden Pikelets with a nice glass of Milo?

THROUGH THE FORCES AND THE FRUITS

Fruits tend to have a high glycemic index, so I recommend that people take their fruits with a meal or with some protein like cottage cheese or regular cheese. These protein sources help mitigate the glycemic effect of the fruit. Don’t let a high index number keep you from your apple a day.