Glycemic load can help you eat right & lose fat….

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-28-2007

(This post is a very good short-summary of how to eat right.)

Foods that cause very rapid rises in your blood sugar tend to cause you to put on fat you don’t need. They can cause mood problems. And, if you eat a lot of them & eat them often, you tend to be fat & are at very high risk of type II diabetes & cardiovascular disease if you don’t have them already.

One way to measure this is with the glycemic index. It measures how much an equal weight of food tends to increase the blood sugar of the person eating it.

The bad news is that it can be misleading since a typical serving of some foods is large & for others it’s quite a bit smaller.

Why not have a measure of the blood sugar increase of typical servings of food?

There is one. A measure of this more accurate & useful number was created & is called the Glycemic Load.

Last week on Thursday, 8-23-2007 in the Early to Rise email there was an excellent article on this which I include today.:

(This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.)

Glycemic Index? Not So Fast

By Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., CNS

If you’re a regular ETR reader, you already know how important the glycemic index is to make sure you’re eating well. But there’s a big problem with using the glycemic index as a guide to eating: It doesn’t take into account portion size. Glycemic load - a far more useful number - does.

The glycemic index measures your blood sugar response to a "standard" serving of 50 grams of digestible (non-fiber) carbohydrate. Great. But the real world of actual portions presents a much different picture. Some carbohydrate foods have way less than 50 grams in a serving, while many typically have a lot more.

Enter the glycemic load, a formula that multiplies the glycemic index by the number of grams of carbs in a typical portion (and then divides the result by 100, in case you’d like to do the actual math). Because the formula for glycemic load takes into account real-life portion sizes, it gives you a much better idea of what a food is doing to your blood sugar.

Take spaghetti and carrots, for example. The glycemic index of 50 grams of spaghetti is only "moderate," but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who eats just 50 grams of spaghetti. The glycemic load of spaghetti is humongous. And while the glycemic index of 50 grams of carrots is "high," you probably wouldn’t eat 50 grams of carrots. (There are only three grams of carbohydrate in a single carrot.) Carrots have a high glycemic index- but a very low glycemic load.

Using the glycemic index is a great start in learning about the impact of food on your blood sugar. But glycemic load is even better, because it takes into account what you’re actually likely to eat.

It’s easier to find the glycemic index of a food than the glycemic load, but you can find both at mendosa.com/gilists.htm.

Alternately, you could ignore the entire glycemic numbers game and just follow this simple rule: When it comes to sugar, less is more, zero is better.

[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health. He’s a board certified nutritionist with a master’s degree in psychology, and the author of the best-selling book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com.”
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More info I got from www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm : (It’s listed in his article above.)

Many foods that enhance your health are very low in glycemic load.

Though they are not listed in that reference source, health enhancing or health OK protein & fats like extra virgin olive oil, avocados, nuts, wild caught salmon, beef fed only grass, poultry only pasture fed, & some other wild caught fish & seafoods are all very low or zero in glycemic load.

Almost all green nonstarchy vegetables are very low in glycemic load & very nutritious.

Strawberries & lentils are very low.

Many fruits are low: apples, whole grapes, kiwi fruit, whole oranges, peaches, plums, & nectarines, prunes, & other berries are all low.

Nonfat yogurt is low.

Bananas, real fruit juices, oatmeal, & barley are moderately low.

Sweet potatoes are medium but very nutritious.

If almost all of what you eat is on this list as listed as low, you’ll find it much easier to stay healthy, stay trim, &/or to lose excess fat if you have it now. That’s particularly true if you also do NOT eat foods that are high.

What foods are high & so are better NOT eaten or eaten only VERY rarely?

Much to my surprise almost all kinds of rice are high. Pasta is high. I already knew potatoes & French fries are high. (Raisins are high but can be eaten occasionally along with low or very low glycemic load foods to compensate.) The other foods that are listed here as high simply are eaten too often & in such large servings that they are NOT good food choices. (Very small servings eaten with low glycemic foods or small servings once a week or less may be OK for some people.)

Also, any food made with refined grains is either high or tends to impact most people as high. And, unlike most of the foods listed above as low, they have little fiber to help make you feel full. They also don’t give you as much nutrition as the low glycemic load foods do.

Lastly, foods & drinks made with high fructose corn syrup tend to boost your blood sugar, to NOT make you feel less hungry, & even to make you MORE hungry sometimes.

And, food & drinks made with artificial sweeteners tend to be eaten along with high glycemic load foods, make you MORE hungry for real sugar, & to cause problems with metabolizing sugars & fats from other sources I’ve read. A recent study found that in addition to the studies showing they don’t work to help with fat loss, diet soft drinks made with artificial sweeteners produce as many health problems as regular soft drinks do.