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Jan
23

Q&A: Is there an complete and accurate list of GI Index Foods?

Question by Just a Girl: Is there an complete and accurate list of GI Index Foods?
I am trying to find LOW GI foods but no one has a complete list. And then some sites say a particular food is low on the scale but then another says its high. What gives!?

Best answer:

Answer by buffalo
http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm

This is the most complete index on the web. Covers almost everything.

This table includes the glycemic index and glycemic load of more than 2,480 individual food items. Not all of them, however, are available in the United States. They represent a true international effort of testing around the world.

The glycemic index (GI) is a numerical system of measuring how much of a rise in circulating blood sugar a carbohydrate triggers–the higher the number, the greater the blood sugar response. So a low GI food will cause a small rise, while a high GI food will trigger a dramatic spike. A list of carbohydrates with their glycemic values is shown below. A GI is 70 or more is high, a GI of 56 to 69 inclusive is medium, and a GI of 55 or less is low.

The glycemic load (GL) is a relatively new way to assess the impact of carbohydrate consumption that takes the glycemic index into account, but gives a fuller picture than does glycemic index alone. A GI value tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate turns into sugar. It doesn’t tell you how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food. You need to know both things to understand a food’s effect on blood sugar. That is where glycemic load comes in. The carbohydrate in watermelon, for example, has a high GI. But there isn’t a lot of it, so watermelon’s glycemic load is relatively low. A GL of 20 or more is high, a GL of 11 to 19 inclusive is medium, and a GL of 10 or less is low.

Foods that have a low GL almost always have a low GI. Foods with an intermediate or high GL range from very low to very high GI.

Both GI and GL are listed here. The GI is of foods based on the glucose index–where glucose is set to equal 100. The other is the glycemic load, which is the glycemic index divided by 100 multiplied by its available carbohydrate content (i.e. carbohydrates minus fiber) in grams. (The “Serve size (g)” column is the serving size in grams for calculating the glycemic load; for simplicity of presentation I have left out an intermediate column that shows the available carbohydrates in the stated serving sizes.) Take, watermelon as an example of calculating glycemic load. Its glycemic index is pretty high, about 72. According to the calculations by the people at the University of Sydney’s Human Nutrition Unit, in a serving of 120 grams it has 6 grams of available carbohydrate per serving, so its glycemic load is pretty low, 72/100*6=4.32, rounded to 4.

Take care

Buff

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3 comments

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  1. jackie m says:

    Low GI foods take longer for the body to turn it into energy, try this link
    http://www.buzzle.com/articles/low-glycemic-foods-for-diabetics.html

  2. Tabea says:

    Look at the official website of the glycemic index at http://www.glycemicindex.com

    The website is run by the University of Sydney team behind the original research in the GI index.

    However a warning – are you diabetic? GI isn’t that applicable to diabetics. The GI index was tested on non-diabetics.

    Many diabetics find that GI makes no difference to how carbs affect their blood sugar, i.e., there is no difference between low and high GI foods. For more, see http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com/2007/10/study-so-called-glycemic-index-is.html

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