Low Glycemic Index Diets – Is The Glycemic Idex The Wrong Tool?
Is the glycemic index (GI) the wrong way to assess the insulin-related effects of food?

The glycemic index measures blood sugar response per gram of carbohydrate contained in a food, not per gram of the food, and leads to some odd numbers. For example, a parsnip has a glycemic index of 98, virtually as high as pure sugar. If taken at face value, this figure suggests that dieters really should steer clear of parsnips like the plague. In reality, parsnips are mostly indigestible fiber, and you would have to eat a couple of bushels to trigger a main glucose and insulin response.

This high number outcomes because the glycemic index rates the effects per gram of carbohydrate rather than rating the effects per gram of total parsnip. The sugar present in minute amounts in a parsnip itself is highly absorbable. The high glycemic index rating of parsnips is therefore incredibly misleading. Books such as The Glucose Revolution take care of issues like this on a case-by-case basis by saying, for example, that you can contemplate most vegetables free of charge foods regardless of their glycemic index. But in reality the very same considerations apply to all foods and distort the meaningfulness of the scale as a whole.

This is taken into account by a different measurement, the glycemic load (GL). The GL is derived by multiplying the glycemic index by the percent carbohydrate content of a food. As a result, it measures the glucose/insulin response per gram of food rather than per gram of carbohydrate in that food. The glycemic load of a parsnip is 10, whilst glucose has a relative load of 100. And bear in mind our potato difficulty, that terrible goblin of GI diets? The glycemic load of a typical serving of potato is only 27, not such a goblin at all. These type of numbers make a lot much more sense.

So is there direct evidence suggesting low GI diets support weight loss? It is undoubtedly doable that focusing on low glycemic-index or low glycemic-load foods will help you lose weight, even if the theoretical justification for the idea is weak. Even so, there is only preliminary evidence to support this possibility. The studies commonly cited, even though promising, are too preliminary to prove much.

In one of these studies, 107 overweight adolescents were divided into two groups: a low-GI group and a low-fat group. The low-GI group was counseled to follow a diet plan consisting of 45% to 50% carbohydrates (preferably low-GI carbohydrates), 20% to 25% protein, and 30% to 35% fat. Calorie restriction was not emphasized. The low-fat group received instructions for a regular low-fat, low-calorie diet divided up into 55% to 60% carbohydrates, 15% to 20% protein, and 25% to 30% fat. Over a period of about 4 months, participants on the low-GI diet plan lost about four.five pounds, while those on the standard diet plan lost just much less than three pounds.

Nonetheless, this study does not say as much about the low-GI approach as 1 might feel. The most obvious issue is that the low-GI diet utilized here was also a high-protein diet plan. It could be that high-protein diets support weight loss regardless of the glycemic index of the foods consumed as claimed by the proponents of high-protein diets.

The study was also flawed in that participants had been not assigned to the two groups randomly. Instead, researchers consciously picked which group each participant would join. This major flaw introduces the possibility of intentional or unintentional bias. It is fairly achievable the researchers placed adolescents with greater self-motivation into the low-GI group, based on an unconscious desire to see outcomes from the study. Contemporary medical studies constantly use randomization to avoid this kind of bias.

Lastly, researchers made no effort to figure out if participants followed their diets. It may possibly be that those in the low-fat diet group basically didn’t stick to the rules as well as those in the low-GI diet group because they found the rules had been a lot more difficult.

In one more study, 30 overweight women with excessively high insulin levels were put on either a typical low-calorie diet plan or a diet that supplied the very same quantity of calories but employed low-GI foods. The outcomes over 12 weeks showed that women following the low-GI diet lost many pounds more than those following the normal diet plan.

An additional modest study involved overweight adolescents in which a conventional decreased calorie diet plan was compared against a low-glycemic load diet plan that with no calorie restrictions. The outcomes showed that simply by sticking to low GI foods, without regard for calories, the participants on the low GI diet were able to lose as significantly or far more weight as those on the low calorie diet plan.

However, conclusions based on observational studies are notoriously unreliable due to the feasible presence of unidentified confusing factors. For example, due to the fact there is an approximate correlation between fiber in the diet and glycemic load, it is feasible that benefits, when seen, are truly due to fiber intake instead. Factors such as this one may well easily obscure the effects of the factor under study, leading to contradictory or misleading outcomes.

Intervention trials (studies in which researchers in fact intervene in participants’ lives) are far more dependable, and some have been conducted to evaluate the low-GI diet plan. 1 such study followed 30 individuals with high lipid levels for three months. Low-GI foods had been substituted for higher-GI foods in the course of the 2nd month, while other nutrients had been kept comparable. Improvements were seen in total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides, but not in HDL. A close analysis of the outcomes showed that only patients who had high triglycerides at the beginning of the study showed benefit. One more controlled trial found that a high carbohydrate, low glycemic load diet plan optimized lipid profile as compared to a number of other diets.

Another approach to the issue involves analysis of effects on insulin resistance. Evidence suggests that increased resistance of the body to its own insulin raises the risk of heart illness. One study discovered that use of a low-GI diet plan versus a high-GI diet improved the body’s sensitivity to insulin in girls at risk for heart illness. Similar results had been seen in a group of men and women with severe heart illness and a group of healthy people.

The evidence that a low-GI diet plan will help you lose weight is not yet quite impressive. Its theoretical foundation is weak, and it appears to be making use of the wrong strategy of ranking foods regarding their effects on insulin. Nonetheless, there’s no evidence showing a low-GI diet causes harm. If you locate that you lose weight with a low-GI diet, stick with it.

Nevertheless, although the most well-known low-GI diet plan books (The Glucose Revolution, Sugar Busters) suggest a diet that is usually reasonable and need to be safe, it is simple to style some fairly extreme low-GI diets. For example, a diet plan consisting of absolutely nothing but lard would be a really, extremely low-GI diet plan, since the glycemic index of lard is . Even though it no longer appears that saturated fat is as harmful as when thought, a pure lard diet is almost certainly not a very good thought. If you run across a diet book that recommends achieving a low glycemic index by consuming an extreme diet, approach it with caution.
om Nuckels is health post author and owner of the LpVitamins.com website. His consumers range from kids to the elderly and from carpenters to doctors. To find out what liquid vitamins and phytonutrients can do for you, go to www.lpvitamins.com .
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5 of 7 Robert “Sugar: Bitter Truth” Lustig interviewed on UndergroundWellness
www.blogtalkradio.com The American Heart Association now recommends that you keep added sugars to less than 5% of your calorie intake. That’s about 25 grams or 6 teaspoons per day for an average-sized adult. blog.nutritiondata.com
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Weight loss, Sugar Addiction, Glycemic Index, GI, Nutrition
Be My Friend – www.myspace.com Part 2 of dealing with sugar addictions. Weight loss, Sugar Addiction, Glycemic Index, GI, Nutrition Glycemic Index Link www.mendosa.com You can improve your health, reduce sugar cravings, have more energy, lose weight, control your appetite & hunger, just by eating low GI food. Most fruit is low to medium GI. Improve your diet and wellness. Please visit Natalie’s website at www.nutritionbynatalie.com This video was produced by psychetruth http www.myspace.com PsycheTruth is empowered by TubeMogul www.tubemogul.com © Copyright 2008 Zoe Sofia. All Rights Reserved. This video may be displayed in public, copied and redistributed for any strictly non-commercial use in its entire unedited form. Alteration or commercial use is strictly prohibited.