The glycemic index is a food-ranking system that rates carbohydrate-containing foods on their ability to raise your blood glucose, or blood sugar. Foods with a low glycemic index produce smaller increases in your blood sugar than foods with a high glycemic index. You can use a low-glycemic index diet to help control diabetes or manage your blood sugar levels. If you are diabetic, discuss the glycemic index diet with your physician before using it.
Glycemic Index Basics
The glycemic index was developed as a way to gain more accurate measurements of the effects of carbohydrates on your blood glucose, according to Oregon State University. Previously, scientists divided carbohydrates into simple forms such as sucrose or fructose and complex forms such as glucose, and assumed that all carbs within each category affected you in the same way. They turned to the glycemic index when they discovered that complex carbohydrates actually have widely varying blood-glucose effects. A given food's glycemic index is measured by comparing its effects on your glucose levels to those produced by equal amounts of white bread or pure glucose.
Low-Glycemic Foods
The American Diabetes Association lists examples of low-glycemic index carbohydrate foods that include dried legumes such as lentils, dried beans such as kidney beans, whole grain cereals such as barley and all-bran, whole grain breads made from wheat or rye, the majority of fruits, some starch-containing vegetables and all non-starchy vegetables. Foods that don't contain carbohydrates, such as various forms of fats and meats, do not have glycemic index rankings.
When constructing a low-glycemic index diet, you will typically fill your meals with foods that have a low or moderate glycemic index. You can also eat some high-glycemic index foods, such as table sugar, as long as you balance them with low-glycemic options.
Pros and Cons
Maria Collazo-Clavell, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic, lists potential benefits of a low-glycemic index diet that include lowering your blood sugar levels, delaying hunger and controlling your appetite, reducing your need for glucose-controlling medications and reducing your body's resistance to insulin by maintaining proper glucose levels.
However, Collazo-Clavell also lists several potential problems with this type of diet. They include the glycemic index's inability to rank food based on its nutritional content, its inability to calculate the effects of various food when eaten in combination and its limitation to only those foods that contain carbohydrates.
Glycemic Load
The glycemic index also does not consider the serving sizes of carbohydrates you consume, Oregon State University notes. To get a more accurate estimate of carbohydrate impact, you can use glycemic load, a measurement technique that considers both quality and quantity of carbohydrates. You can begin calculating the glycemic load of a serving size of food by multiplying its glycemic index by the total grams of carbohydrates it contains. Next, take the resulting number and divide it by 100.
Recommendations
The total amount of carbohydrates you consume is a better gauge of potential blood sugar problems than glycemic index, the American Diabetes Association notes. The organization recommends simple carbohydrate counting as a first-line protection of your health, with glycemic index calculations reserved for people with the patience for more refined control of their food choices.
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