imported_womens-health

A Few Good Carbs: The New Glycemic Index Diet

By: Karen Barrow

Sick of counting carbs? A steamy, hot bowl of pasta or just a piece of fruit starts to look pretty good after another bunless burger. If you have these cravings, another trend in dieting may be for you—the low glycemic index (GI) diet.
Not all carbs are evil is the motto of the low GI diet. As a measurement of how quickly a particular carbohydrate is used by the body, the glycemic index is already found on nutritional labels in Europe and Australia, but has yet to be endorsed any American organization. The GI classifies carbohydrates on a scale to indicate which ones are better to consume if you are trying to lose weight.

"That's what's so different about glycemic index," says David Grotto, RD, LD, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. "It's not low carbohydrate, it's more selective carbohydrate, if you will.

Keeping You Full
Begun as a diet to help people control their diabetes, the general rule of the GI diet is: the higher the glycemic index, the faster a food is metabolized by the body. If a food is digested and broken down by the body quickly, your blood glucose (commonly referred to as blood sugar) levels rise rapidly, leading to a quick insulin response, making you feel tired and hungry sooner. Foods with low GI are metabolized slower, meaning they sit in your digestive track longer and are gradually absorbed by the body. This leads to a more gradual blood glucose increase, keeping your hunger satiated longer.


While a few studies have shown that following a low GI diet will keep you feeling fuller longer, helping you lose weight, there is no conclusive understanding of how this diet works. Keeping track of the GI of foods can get tricky, but this early evidence suggests that it may prove to be a useful tool for dietary planning.

GI assigns a value to a food based on the average body's metabolism of a simple carbohydrate: usually table sugar or white bread, assigned a value of 100. All other foods are then ranked according to how 50 grams of it, as compared to how 50 grams of sugar or white bread, affects one's blood glucose levels after a period of time. A value below 55 would be considered a low GI; a value from 56 to 69 would be a moderate range; anything above 70 is considered to have a high glycemic index. While such values provide a handy guide, they have not been standardized, so two different charts may show a different GI value for the same food.

Related to GI, glycemic load is a measurement that not only takes into account the glycemic index of a food, but also how much of it is there. Since, no matter what, you still can't eat heaping portions of any kind of food, glycemic load may be a better dietary tool than GI alone. Glycemic load can be assigned to an entire meal or to the food eaten over an entire day, for example.

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