Don ’ t toy with glycemic index

Here is a discussion I first posted in my Wheat Belly Total Health book, chapter 7: Grainless Living Day-to-Day. Glycemic index, or GI, describes how high blood sugar climbs over 90 minutes after consuming a food compared to glucose. The GI of a chicken drumstick? Zero: No impact on blood sugar. How about three fried eggs? Zero, too. This is true for other meats, oils and fats, seeds, mushrooms, and non-starchy vegetables. You eat any of these foods and blood sugar doesn’t budge, no glycation phenomena follow, no glucotoxic or lipotoxic damage to such things as your pancreas. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept of GI nor of the related concept, glycemic load, GL, a measure that also factors in the quantity of food. The problem is how the values for GI and GL are interpreted. For instance, categories of GI are arbitrarily broken down into: High glycemic index: 70 or greater Moderate glycemic index: 56-69 Low glycemic index: 55 or less This is like being a little bit more or less pregnant. By this scheme, cornflakes, puffed rice, and pretzels have “high“ GIs above 70, thereby sending your blood sugar through the roof, while whole grain bread, oatmeal, and rice have “low” GIs. A typical non-diabetic person consuming a typical serving of cornflakes, e.g., 1 cup cereal in ½ cup milk, will thereby experience a blood sugar in the neighborhood of 180 mg/dl—very high and more than sufficient to set the process of glycation and glucotoxicity on fire, add...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: News & Updates blood sugar gi gluten-free glycemic grain-free grains Inflammation insulin low-carb Source Type: blogs