Glycemic Index: What It Is and How to Use It
The Glycemic Index (GI) helps people better manage blood sugar. With Glycemic Index, it helps to alert you about what you eat and helps promote better health by reducing weight gain, lessen blood sugar concentration and cholesterol. Here is what Glycemic Index is and how to utilise it to your own good.
What Is a Glycemic Index?
The Glycemic Index helps by letting you know that certain types of food increase blood sugar concentration. Foods fall into a range of different categories of low, medium, and high on a scale of 0 to 100. If the food lies in the “Low” category, it shows that it is less likely to affect your blood sugar concentration. If the food lies in the “Medium” category, it shows that it is more likely to affect your blood sugar concentration. If your food lies in the “High” category, it shows that it is very likely that it affects your blood sugar concentration. The range of GI are;
- Low being 55 or less,
- Medium being 56 to 69, and
- High being 70 and above.
The lower the GI of your food, the better it is.
In order to understand what type of food has low, medium, or high levels of GI, foods which typically digest faster have carbs and sugar so they usually have higher levels of GI. Foods higher in protein, fat, fibre, are then way more likely to have low levels of GI.
How to Use the Glycemic Index
With the understanding of how the Glycemic Index works, now you are able to utilise it for your own good by consuming a lower GI diet than a higher GI diet. In this way, you are able to improve your health even better! This is because having a lower GI is able to help with weight loss, cholesterol, and of course manage blood sugar concentrations better too. Following a low GI diet is not as hard as it seems, as it is not just about eating greens. It is always good to replace high GI food in your diet to a lower GI food.
Fun Fact about Glycemic Index
Did you know that not just the type of food that you consume affects your blood sugar concentrations, but also the degree of ripeness and the way it is cooked? For instance, rice. Rice contains starch, and the longer you cook them, the more digestible the starch is, and hence has a higher GI. Another example, bananas. A fully ripened banana which has an GI of 51, is able to go down to as low as a GI of 30 if the banana is underiped. This happens as the starch in the banana decreases as it ripens.