The glycemic index of a food measures how quickly the sugar in that food reaches your bloodstream. Foods with a high glycemic index cause a rapid spike in your blood sugar levels, and a diet containing many high-glycemic index foods may increase your risk for diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Red lentils make a healthy addition to your diet, in terms of both their glycemic index and caloric value.
Glycemic Index and Load
A food's glycemic index refers to how quickly the carbohydrates in the food raise your blood sugar levels compared to pure glucose. Glycemic index does not necessarily reflect how sweet a food is, because some sweet-tasting sugars, such as fructose, raise your blood sugar only slightly. Glycemic index is related to glycemic load, which accounts not only for a food's glycemic index but also for how much digestible carbohydrate a food contains. A diet rich in foods with a low glycemic load may help control your diabetes and keep you at a healthy weight. Highly processed foods often have a high glycemic index and load, while minimally processed foods, such as red lentils, offer a healthier glycemic profile.
Red Lentils
Red lentils are a type of legume, plants whose seeds grow in pods. Along with beans and peas, red lentils have a high protein content and are also low in fat and rich in fiber. Other varieties of lentils include green and brown. While nutritionally similar to these varieties, red lentils taste milder than green and brown lentils and also cook faster.
Nutrition
Lentils, including red lentils, are a nutrient-dense food because they contain a great deal of nutritional value in relatively few calories. A 1-cup serving of cooked lentils provides 18 g of protein and 15 g of fiber in only 230 calories. This serving size of lentils also offers nearly your entire daily requirement for folate and iron. Red lentils have low glycemic index and low glycemic load values of 21 and 4, respectively.
Considerations
Because of their high protein, high iron, high fiber and low fat content, red lentils are a healthy addition to your diet when you want to reduce your meat intake. Red lentils may not be as readily available at your grocery store as the more common brown lentils, so check specialty stores. Green and brown lentils have a similar glycemic index and glycemic load as red lentils. These varieties may make a suitable healthful substitute if you are unable to find red lentils.
