How to Use the Glycemic Index to Make Sound Food Choices

One diet guru seen recently, selling their latest book as it happens, talked about the evils of “bad” carbohydrates like they are somehow conscious entities that are lying in wait for the unwary consumer who might eat them.

Like so many sales pitches out there, there is a kernel (if you’ll pardon the pun) of truth in what they say but the rest of the story has become rather embellished in the telling.

Let’s talk about carbohydrates and how they work in your body.

The first thing we need to understand is that there are no qualities like “good” or “bad” in our biology. Nature is disquietingly indifferent as to whether a food, or anything else related to our physiology, is good or bad for us. Nature relies on our innate senses to stop doing things that don’t do us good while it goes about meeting our immediate needs. Things like keeping your Life systems fueled and functioning.

In the case of carbohydrates, depending on the state (i.e. cooked, raw, ripe, unripe. etc.) of the sugar, your body will respond in a somewhat predictable manner. This is called a glycemic factor.

Carbohydrate sugars are wonderful fuels stored in your muscles but are not much welcome in the bloodstream. If the food has a high glycemic factor, your body brings on its insulin response and works tirelessly to move that sugar out of the bloodstream and into the tissues for storage.

If a food has a lower glycemic factor, your body digests it at a more leisurely pace and blood sugar does not spike as high.

The cataloging of many of these factors together is what is called the Glycemic Index (GI). Several links to GI information sources are provided on this page. Please help yourself.

The lower the number on the GI, the less likely it will produce the insulin response. It is this insulin response that is compromised in Diabetes.

Diabetics have an impaired ability to move sugar out of the bloodstream and into storage. Since your body was not designed to store sugar in the bloodstream, over time, circulating sugar levels create toxic responses in the tissues blood vessels pass through. Which is almost every tissue in the body.

Using the Glycemic Index Chart

The GI is a guide to making informed decisions about your food choices. Besides carbohydrates, keep in mind the fat and protein content of the foods listed. A high fat food will likely have a low GI factor but that doesn’t mean to consume that food with abandon. This is all about finding balance in your food choices.

Foods with a higher GI factor or load, will stress your sugar-handling mechanisms (and tend to contribute to weight gain) more so than a lower number. When using this chart, you want to balance the higher number foods with the lower. Remember, we are looking at putting together a meal here, so step back and look at the overall makeup of your food choices. Try to favor lower glycemic choices when possible.

 

 

Use one of the many GI references linked on this page and evaluate your food choices. The Glycemic Index is one of many tools you can use in selecting the foods that best fit your nutritional and lifestyle needs.

The GI is not comprehensive enough to be the sole basis of a diet however. A low GI number may also be a high fat choice, so be educated in what makes up a food choice, employ a liberal dose of common sense, and enjoy your food choices.

The end result of employing useful resources like the Glycemic Index is you make food choices that benefit your body for both the immediate need and over the long term. And that is something you can feel good about.

 

“If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are basically assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another.

The universe has no fixed agenda. Once you make any decision, it works around that decision. There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling, and action that you experience.

If this sounds too mystical, refer again to the body. Every significant vital sign- body temperature, heart rate, oxygen consumption, hormone level, brain activity, and so on- alters the moment you decide to do anything… decisions are signals telling your body, mind, and environment to move in a certain direction.”

― Deepak Chopra