Have you ever noticed that after indulging in your favourite cookies or sipping a sugary drink, you feel a sudden drop in energy, followed by drowsiness and - soon enough - hunger striking again?
With lifestyle diseases like diabetes and obesity on the rise, many are now more conscious about what they eat. One essential but often overlooked aspect of healthy eating is understanding the glycemic index (GI) - a tool that measures how quickly foods raise your blood sugar.
Talking of food in the context of healthy eating is incomplete without understanding the role of food's glycemic index and how it matters in determining one’s health and well-being.
Let’s quickly delve into the basics of the glycemic index or GI. Basically, whatever you eat gets converted into the simplest form of sugar called ‘glucose’, which is readily absorbed by the blood cells, and during this process of absorption, the spike that occurs in the blood cells is measured by this entity termed the glycemic index of foods.
This spike is calculated on a scale of 0-100 and based on this, foods are classified as low (0-55), medium (56-69), or high (70 and above). The general picture says that the higher the GI of any food, the quicker it is digested and absorbed into the bloodstream, leaving you with sugar crashes, a post-meal dip after consuming, and thus, bringing you back to square one, that is, famished again.
In parallel terms, a term called Glycemic Load (GL) is also used, which is a measure of the amount of carbs in one’s food and how they raise the blood sugar level after eating. A common example is cited of watermelon, whose GI is 80, but when it is consumed, it shows a GL of just 5.
To put it simply, GI is a rough estimate that tells how much your blood sugar could elevate after eating a particular food item. But, GL gives a more accurate figure in terms of how actually that food increases your blood sugar level after consuming the food taking into consideration how it is prepared, the fat content, the type of carbohydrate, the content of fibre and starch present in the food, the serving size and the rate of absorption and digestion of different foods.
In other words, GL is more comprehensive than GI to analyse the impact of foods on your blood glucose levels and thus your health. As per GL, foods are also sorted as low (0-10), medium (11-19), and high (more than 20). Thus, it is very likely that a food having low GL can disguise high GI, but a food with low GL will demonstrate low GI.
By now, you might be wondering what foods are low on the GI and how to incorporate them more into your diet. Day-to-day examples include meat, poultry, olive oil, nuts, seeds, whole grains and herbs, and spices. They keep you satiated for longer, your blood glucose levels under control, and certainly help you attain your health goals.
On the other hand, white breads, white rice, starchy veggies like potatoes, French fries, fruit juices, cookies, chocolates, and chips are some of the high GI foods and must be avoided as much as possible.
And before concluding, here is a pro tip: when you crave these high GI foods, just add some sort of fibre along with them, such as a whole fruit or veggies, instead of galloping a large can of soft drink or juice, an orange or cucumber makes a good option, nuts or seeds, to minimise the spike and reduce the glycemic load.
For the principle, it is better to stick to the usual low GI and low GL meals.
The writer is a general physician and content creator
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
