Some people have never heard of the Glycemic Index and how food is ‘weighted’ and why the process is even necessary.

Even more people have heard of GI, but don’t know much about it, and their lives are just too busy already to learn something new about the way food affects the human body.

This post is a primer of sorts, an introduction to the Glycemic Index, an explanation of why this is important for overall health, and where to get more information on the subject of Low GI eating.

Keep in mind that this is a far more advanced concept of understanding food’s effect on your body than simple calorie counting. Although the caloric value of a food is somewhat important for health and well-being, far too many people place far too much emphasis on calories when watching their weight – one of the major reasons that diets don’t work!

What is the Glycemic Index?

The Glycemic Index is a measure of foods’ and combination of foods’ ability to raise a body’s blood glucose levels. The process of determining a food’s effect is costly and requires scientific experimentation using human subjects.

If you are looking to lose weight, manage your weight, prevent the onset of diabetes or manage your blood sugar levels, understanding the Glycemic Index is important. I might also add that if you are a parent or caretaker who influences eating habits of others, learning about GI should be a primary concern and responsibility.

What Foods Affect Glucose Levels?

Sugar, of course, natural and refined. Carbohydrates also convert to glucose in your body, but carbs are not all created equal and are a necessity to optimum health – so don’t nix them from your intake just yet…

The best direction you can take for your body – no matter what your health goals are – is to fuel your body with foods that do not cause ’spikes’ in your blood glucose levels.

Low GI foods, slowly digested, cause a gradual rise and fall in glucose. This is optimum to healthy bodies because:

• low GI foods reduce the secretion of your body’s insulin throughout the day,
• low glucose levels decrease oxidative stress in your blood, heart and other organs,
• an even blood glucose level throughout the day ensures vessels remain elastic, reducing formation of plaque leading to atherosclerosis (heart disease),
• low glucose levels reduce your body’s tendency to form blood clots, and
• slowing the digestion through Low GI dieting, helps delay hunger pangs and therefore promotes weight loss.

If you’re starting to understand that foods which take your body longer to digest are better for your body, you’d be correct – but there’s more to Low GI diets than meets the eye so read on!

Know More About the Food You’re Eating Than Its GI Value

The Glycemic Index is not meant to be used in isolation when understaning a food’s effect on the human body. If that was the case, you might assume that low GI, but high fat, foods (i.e. chocolate, potato chips, beer), are a good choice – but these would, in fact, be poor dietary choices overall since they are high in fat or other potentially harmful substances.

High fat foods do have a tendancy to appear on the GI as a low GI food – especially when compared to their lower fat equivalents. For instance potato chips have a GI of 54, vs. their more natural counterpart potatoes with a GI of 85. Your glucose levels may be maintained, but you’d quickly gain weight and clog your arteries with all that fat intake if you simply took the GI at face value.

With that said, don’t avoid all foods just because they have fat. Fats, like carbohydrates, have a wide spectrum of good to bad. Good fats, eaten with carbohydrates, round out a meal whereby the fat is beneficial and the meal becomes low GI. Which is my next point – combining foods for optimum health.

I won’t go into great detail in this post about combining – I’ll save it for another day, once you’ve had a chance to mull over and hopefully adopt the low GI way of life – but as an example of the power of combining…just a few good squirts of a fresh lemon can lower the GI of a meal. Wouldn’t you agree then, that learning about the Glycemic Index, combining foods, and later Glycemic Loads, is important and vital to your overall health?

I thought so!

Talk to you soon,

Laura Childs

p.s. Two books I’m reading right now (although they were published in 2005 and are well reviewed on Amazon) are:

One of the largest obstacles to losing weight is re-learning how to cook. Having been on my own since I was 15 and having spent years working in the restaurant industry, I find myself in a position where I can cook a great meal for many people, effortlessly.

That’s not a proud boast! Lately I’ve been cooking for my family and dinner guests with an attitude of change. Change in intake that is.

As we’ve aged, we’re all growing spare tires, sporting muffin tops (that round of fat that bulges over the top of your jeans), and discovering love handles. Apart from the cosmetic disgust this type of fat on our bodies is the worst medically.

After a year of reading multiple research studies, dietary books, health magazines, and subscribing to various member’s only websites, I’ve taken a turn into eating, cooking, and feeding others a diet based on the Glycemic Index.

I will discuss this in later posts, but for now – if you are following me in this lifestyle weight loss change and decide to go off discovering more on your own – be very careful! I have purchased ebooks and paperbacks of recipes that are professed to be Low GI – but are not by any stretch of the imagination, low GI. (I have asked for refunds on ebooks and returned books to Chapters as a result. I think the authors should learn that the educated public won’t waste money on this stuff anymore!)

The trouble is that the Glycemic Index is still a relatively new theory/concept/ideal. People have had massive success with it – dieters and diabetes sufferers alike – but compiling the data for any food’s GI level (as well as combinations of foods) requires time in the scientist’s lab with real human experimentation.

Thankfully many raw foods have already been calculated and are easily available to the health conscious crowd. In my own personal library, one book stands far above all the others and it sells for less than $8. It begins with a brief introduction of the Glycemic Index and touches on the Glycemic Load of a meal or quantity consumed. My favorite part however is at the back 2/3s of this book – a listing of foods and their value.

Be sure to understand that this is not a new way of counting calories! This is the how and why of your body storing fat vs. burning it as energy. This is the answer to your questions about metabolism. This is the reason why we plateau when we diet and exercise – or both.

This is why so many diets have failed so many people for so long…

Having learned this, and spent a few hours these past two weeks finding the best tools online and using the books I have here as supplementary information – I have lost 12 pounds. Without fuss or freaking out. Without hunger or depression. And I have more pep today than I’ve had on any good day in the last two years.

Plus, on my path to being a conscious eater I’ve lost that uncomfortable bloated feeling at the end of every day. I’m not entirely convinced at this time that this is the result of low GI eating. I have a feeling that loosing that bloat awkwardness was more leaving white flour with yeast behind.

Over the next few weeks I will write more for you on the Glycemic Index and the Glycemic Load of different foods and combinations of food. I will also post tested and tasty recipes – that have been evaluated for their GI and GL points – and hopefully deter those people writing recipe books and ebooks that steer good people wrong – taking their money and giving them low GI recipes that don’t make the cut (i.e. are not low glycemic recipes at all).

In the meantime review these books with me, that you can purchase used for less than $10 together and learn more about the Glycemic Index.