Glycemic Index

I mentioned in the Diseases of Civilization post that avoiding insulin resistance can go a long way in preventing a great many chronic illnesses. The best way to do this is by controlling blood glucose levels through diet, as insulin is released to clear glucose from your blood. The glycemic index has been created to do just that. It is an index that measures the effects of your carbohydrate consumption on your blood glucose levels.

It is on a scale of 0-100 with the higher the number being, the higher your blood glucose levels rise after eating. This means that you want to try to eat low glycemic foods rather than high glycemic foods. Anything under 50 is considered low by researchers and anything over 70 is considered high. As a reference point white bread is given perfect 100 score. You can checkout out glycemicindex.com to figure out the GI of most foods.

As with anything, the GI of a food is not the total picture and focusing only on a food’s GI will not give you perfect health. Like I said before, the main point is controlling insulin sensitivity and some foods may have a low GI but still produce a powerful insulin response. The main culprit of this are dairy products which have low GI scores but an insulin response on par with white bread. Simply avoiding most processed foods and starchy vegetables like potatoes is the best way to do this without trying to remember the exact number of anything (GI, calories, insulin response).