What You Need To Know About Glycemic Index Listing
One day, your doctor might recommend to you to go on a “Low GI diet”. In this case, “GI” does not stand for “GI Joe”, “Gastro Intestinal” or “Global Income”. No, the GI that your doctor is referring to is short for Glycemic Index. This is a reasonably quick food ranking scale according to how the food affects your blood sugar levels. If you have diabetes (either type), heart disease or hypoglycemia, you will need to keep track of whatever goes into your mouth to avoid going into a coma. You need to know the glycemic index listing of everything and anything you eat.
Where Is It?
The glycemic index listing is put out by the Human Nutrition Unit of the University of Sydney. You can either by their booklet or access their website – www.glycemicindex.com – to find the full list. Unfortunately, because of its size, your will not be able to download the full glycemic index listing or have it emailed to you. They have ranked foods on a scale of 0 to 100 to determine how many carbohydrates it has. It’s the carbohydrates that affect your blood sugar levels. The lower the number in the glycemic index listing, the lower the carbohydrates.
What Do They Know?
The testing to determine the glycemic index listing of each food was determined through clinical studies, not just throwing a dart at a board. A typical test was conducted like this:
Ten healthy human guinea pigs go on an overnight fast.
They are then fed about 50 grams of the food being tested.
They have blood samples from their fingertips done 4-8 times in the next two hours to see how much the guinea pig’s blood sugar levels are affected.
The average rating (put into a complicated mathematical formula) is then the assigned number on the glycemic index listing.
This test has been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the University of Sydney’s glycemic index listing is recommended by WHO. It’s taken over twenty years to come up with the current glycemic index listing.
How To Use
If you are on the website, you just enter the food name and the information pops up. In the booklets, you look up the food name and the information will already be next to it. Keep in mind that brand names mentioned tend to be Australian or English rather than American, but there’s not that much difference in GI levels.
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