Low Glycemic Food Index
Dec0
A lot of what you need to know about the glycemic index is here. Like what IS the glycemic index, anyway? (Short answer: a system of ranking foods according to how much they raise blood sugar.) Why is the glycemic index controversial? Can eating low glycemic-index foods really help prevent diabetes and colon cancer and heart disease? And control my weight?
But not quite everything you need to know about the glycemic index is in that one blog post. Among other things, you need an actual glycemic index that lists foods according to how much they raise your blood sugar. I couldn't find a really complete glycemic index, and maybe there is no such thing. But Diabetes.net has a good one here. (Scroll down past the book-selling stuff.)
And Wikipedia has a brief table summarizing categories of high. medium. and low glycemic-index foods. Keep in mind, though, that you can't always easily estimate the glycemic index of a food. Those bagels up there are actually high glycemic-index items.
As with any topic related to diets, almost any search engine will garner you a ton of stuff. There's an enormous amount of detail about the glycemic index out there, much of it useful. But there is also an enormous amount of salesmanship, so beware.
Going vegan may not guarantee a slim figure, but there is plenty of evidence that vegans are at lower risk for obesity. Vegan diets tend to be slightly lower in fat and significantly higher in fiber, two factors that can help control weight. Some research shows that vegan meals also have a lower glycemic index.
The glycemic index of a food (or a meal) is a measure of its effect on blood glucose. Foods with a high glycemic index cause a rapid spike in blood glucose levels, followed by a surge in insulin production. Insulin is the hormone that ushers glucose into cells where it is used for energy production. Diets with a high glycemic index have been linked to risk for heart disease and perhaps cancer. Diets that are low in fiber and have a high glycemic index may also raise risk for diabetes.
Choosing foods and meals with a lower glycemic index results in a smaller, more gradual increase in blood glucose levels. In addition to lowering risk for chronic disease, a low-glycemic index diet may help delay hunger, making it easier to lose weight. Research from Great Britain suggests that meals with a low glycemic index boost levels of a hormone that suppresses appetite.
Some fad diets mistakenly restrict all carbohydrates in order to keep the glycemic index low. But according to research, blood glucose is well controlled on very high carbohydrate diets as long as meals are based on fiber-rich, whole, unprocessed plant foods.