The Dietitian’s Folly: Glycemic Index (GI)

Here is an excerpt from Wheat Belly Total Health, 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, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, and non-starchy vegetables. You eat any of these foods and blood sugar doesn’t budge, no glycation phenomena follow, no glucotoxicity, no lipotoxicity. 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, 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 to adrenal disruption, cataract formation, destruction of cartilage, hyperten...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle carbohydrates gluten glycemic index grains Source Type: blogs