How Can I Tell What The Glycemic Index Number Is By Reading A Food Label?

How Can I Tell What The Glycemic Index Number is by Reading a Food Label?

Jun 14, 2011 | By Jake Wayne

Glycemic index is a measure of how fast and how much a given food will affect your blood sugar, says an article at DiabetesNet. Glucose has a glycemic index value of 100, and other foods receive a rating based on their comparison to eating glucose, or raw, pure sugar. Foods with a high glycemic index are hard on the pancreas, contribute to weight gain and make your body crave food later on. Although precise glycemic index is measured by experimentation, you can get a ballpark idea from information on nutrition labels.

Step 1

Find the total grams of carbohydrates, usually located in the same panel as the fats, cholesterol and sodium counts, on the nutrition label.

Step 2

Find the sugar carbohydrates entry, located under the bold face entry for total carbohydrates.

Step 3

Divide the sugar carbohydrates entry by the total carbohydrates entry. The result is the percentage of that food item's carbohydrates derived from easily-digested sugars.

Tips and Warnings

This technique will not give you the canonical glycemic index number. However, it will give you a measure of the food's glycemic content expressed as a percentage of its carbohydrates, which is essentially what the glycemic index measures.
Do not use these figures side-by-side with regular glycemic index numbers. Rather, use it as a portable way to compare foods in real time while at the supermarket. As a general rule, low glycemic index foods are more healthful than high glycemic index foods.