GLYCEMIC LIST and GLYCEMIC LOAD

We have had articles before on the Glycemic List of foods, but that is only half of what you need to know. There is another rating called the Glycemic Load.

If you look at the list you will see that watermelon is rated at about a 72, which according to the glycemic list is high. Just looking at that you would want to avoid watermelon completely. The thing is, is that watermelon has very little of the carbs in a serving, so it is low on the glycemic load list.

To figure out what all this means let's start simply from the beginning using our watermelon example.

Foods are given a glycemic rating from 1 to 100, the lower the number the slower the spike is in your blood sugar, the higher the number the faster the rise in blood sugar. This is important for diabetics because we strive to keep our sugar levels even throughout the day. This helps us to know how much insulin we may need, but it also serves to make us feel fuller for longer and prevents us from overeating because we're hungry.

To paint a complete picture we also need to know how many available carbs are in the serving of food. The mathematical formula to figure this out would be to divide the glycemic index number by 100, and then multiply it by the available carb number. Available carbs are the amount of carbs minus the amount of fiber.

In the watermelon example the glycemic index is 72. 72 divided by 100 would equal .72, there are 6 available carbs in the serving, so you would multiply .72 by 6 which gives you 4.32, you can then round it off to a 4. According to the list of glycemic loads, 1 to 10 is low, 11 to 19 is medium, and 20 and over is high.

Most of us don't want to go through the math for everything we eat, so see the next article for a list of foods which are do's and don'ts.