Explaining The Glycemic Index And Glycemic Load Of Foods

Importance of the glycemic index – how and what is the glycemic index impact on health?

Besides the fact that they do not cause drastic spikes in one’s blood glucose levels, low-GI foods are usually also healthier options, providing more nutrient and fiber content, while having lower levels of fats and calories.

Thus, overall, low-GI foods are taken to be healthier food options, and many people plan their diets with the glycemic index firmly in mind.

I hope this page has given you an overall idea of what is a glycemic index value and how the glycemic index works.

For more information on the health benefits of low glycemic diets and low glycemic food, and the corresponding detrimental effects of high glycemic foods, click here.

ADDED INFORMATION on the Glycemic Load

According to Wikipedia (extracted on 7 Sep 2014):

“The glycemic load (GL) of food is a number that estimates how much the food will raise a person’s blood glucose level after eating it. One unit of glycemic load approximates the effect of consuming one gram of glucose.”

The difference between the glycemic load and glycemic index of a food is that, on top of accounting for how much each gram of carbohydrate in a food raises blood glucose levels (which is the glycemic index itself), the glycemic load also takes into account how much carbohydrate there is in the food.

The GL of a food is based on its GI, and is defined as “the fraction of available carbohydrate in the food times the food’s GI”.

In other words, the GL estimates the impact of consuming carbohydrates using the GI, while at the same time taking into account the amount of carbohydrates that is being consumed.

The GL can be described as a “GI-weighted measure of carbohydrate content”.

Let us use watermelon as an example. It has a high GI, but watermelon typically does not contain much carbohydrates, so it has a low GL.

While GI is a figure for a specific type of food, GL can be calculated for various serving sizes of that food.

The GL of a specific serving of a food can be obtained by multiplying its carbohydrate content in grams by its GI, and then dividing the result by the serving weight of the food.

Going back to the watermelon example – supposing watermelon has a GI of 70. A 100g serving of the fruit only has about 5g of carbohydrates. The GL of 100g of watermelon is thus 5×70/100=3.5.

It is useful to note that 100g of a food with a GI of 100 and 5g of available carbohydrates has the same GL as 100g of another food with a GI of only 5 but 100g of available carbohydrates.

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