500 LOW GLYCEMIC INDEX RECIPES / 500 وصفة ذات مؤشر جلايسيمي منخفض

500 LOW GLYCEMIC INDEX RECIPES,

What Exactly Is the Glycemic Index?

The glycemic index does indeed relate to the carbohydrates in food. But it isn’t so much a measure of the quantity of carbohydrates as their quality.

Specifically it is a measure of how much the carbohydrates in foods affect your blood glucose level.

Glucose is really what we are talking about when we use the term blood sugar as I did a few paragraphs ago.

It is the most simple form of sugar, and its concentration in the blood is what we are measuring when we talk about “blood sugar levels.”

The digestive process converts other more complex sugars and starches, in other words carbohydrates, into glucose for use in the body.

What the glycemic index measures is how quickly that process happens for different foods.

High-GI foods break down quickly, causing a spike in the blood glucose level.

Lower-GI foods break down more slowly but over a longer period of time, affecting blood glucose less.

The initial research on the glycemic index was done by Dr. David Jenkins and Dr. Thomas Wolever at the University of Toronto in the early 1980s.

Prior to that time it was generally accepted that the diet my mother followed was the best for controlling blood sugar.

It was believed that simple carbohydrates like granulated sugar broke down quickly and caused a sudden increase in blood glucose, while more complex carbohydrates like potatoes did not. Dr. Jenkins and his colleagues in Toronto tested a number of different foods, measuring the size and speed of their effect on blood glucose levels in the people eating them.

He discovered that the common assumptions were not correct.

In fact, some starches like potatoes, bread, and rice broke down much more quickly than the sugars in fruit and other foods.

The glycemic index for various foods was determined by testing people’s blood glucose

levels after they had eaten the foods.

Pure glucose was assigned a value of 100, and other foods were given values based on how they raised the blood glucose level compared to glucose.

Over the years a number of different studies have been done in Britain, France, Italy, Sweden, Australia, and Canada to determine the glycemic index of foods.

Tables are available for over 700 different foods.

While this isn’t nearly every food, it does give us a good reference point for a lot of the more common foods containing carbohydrates.

Foods such as meats, dairy products, and salad vegetables were not tested because they don’t contain enough carbohydrates to raise the blood glucose level measurably.

As expected, most foods have a GI value less than the 100 of pure glucose, although it was discovered that a few foods like jasmine rice actually affect the blood glucose level more than pure glucose.

In general terms we call a food with a GI value of 55 or less low GI, 56 to 69 medium GI, and 70 or above high GI.