Nutrition: What is Glycemic Index?

Nutrition: What is Glycemic Index? - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. It is really important when you are looking at this big group called carbohydrates to understand that it is a huge group. The Glycemic Index is something that was developed to try to help us understand how that group called carbohydrate has consequences in the bloodstream in terms of sugar. So, the Glycemic Index is kind of like the speedometer on your car. What these really smart people at Harvard figured out, about 20 some years ago, was that every carbohydrate you eat breaks down at different rates and the body finds the glucose, or the sugar, in that carbohydrate at different rates, and then dumps it over into the bloodstream at different rates in different amounts. So, really what this Glycemic Index is about is about looking at kind of what is the speed of that sugar, or what is the speed of that carbohydrate? And you can imagine this group called carbohydrate is enormous. It contains everything from spinach to table sugar. It is all your vegetables. It is all your fruits. It is all your grains and everything made from them. So, it is really important to understand how quickly they have a consequence in the body. When you are looking at the Glycemic Index, that speedometer goes from 0 to 100. High Glycemic is considered above 55. So, it is a really good idea for us to kind of keep in mind, and it is easy to remember, your speed limit is 55. You know, there are going to be times you go over that. You know, maybe you have to accelerate to get away from something, but more often than not you want to be conserving. You want to go under 55. Almost everything on the list that is under 55 is going to be a vegetable, a low glycemic fruit, fruit kind of balances across that board, and whole grains. When you start processing grains you start pushing it above 55. When you get to sugar, itself, which is a highly processed grain or fruit, then you are up at the top. There are a couple of tricky ones to remember. Starches, particularly in the form of root vegetables like potatoes, beets, carrots, when you cook those, those starches get broken down into their component sugar parts. Glucose does not taste sweet to the palate like fructose does, so we do not think baked potato, glucose. But, in fact, a baked potato has more glucose consequences than a teaspoon of sugar does because it is straight glucose. So, you want to minimize the things that are straight glucose that dump into the bloodstream quickly, or if you decide to partake in those, keep your portions small and wrap those with an entire meal. So, if you are going to have that baked potato, maybe have half the baked potato. Make sure you have some broccoli, make sure you have that with your steak, however you are building that, but do not make the baked potato the main meal. So, you want to make sure that you have a balance. You want to try to stay to the low end of the Glycemic Index, and really focus on whole foods. And that is really the best way to think about the Glycemic Index and how to build a healthy diet.