Because of Type 2 diabetes I have to be careful about what I eat. Too many carbs and too high the glycemic index (GI) and my glucose levels can shoot too high. I have been writing down what I have been eating to help track what the GI is for the foods that I consume. After researching further I have found out about Glycemic Load (GL) measurements as well and how they differ from Glycemic Index ones.
The Glycemic Index (GI), which was developed back in 1981, has been used by diabetics for these many years to track which foods they should be eating and how it affects their glucose levels over the 2 to 3 hours after they eat them. The low GI foods are those like meat and fish while the high GI foods are like potatoes and pasta. The higher the GI the more it causes glucose levels to rise. My blood glucose levels should be maintained at around 100 mg/dL.
The GI scale goes from 0 to 100 and a low GI value is under 55 while a high value is above that. The GI compares 50 gram portions of the same quantity of carbohydrates for the different food sources being measured. But since food in a meal is rarely ever served in equal carbohydrate portions so a different kind of of measurement is needed for real world serving conditions. That is where Glycemic Load (GL) comes into play. The GL measures the effect of the GI of a food times its available carbohydrate content in grams in a standard serving. The GL is calculated by multiplying the amount of carbohydrate in a given serving of food by the GI of that same food and then dividing that number by 100. A low GL is considered < 10 while a high amount is > 20. For example 1 cup of brown rice has a GI of 55 but its GL is 24. A medium carrot has a GI of 71 while its GL is only 6. Fellow diabetics and hard training athletes should consider using the glycemic load to help in making the right carbohydrate food choices.