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The Glycemic Index

Our first topic is the Glycemic Index (GI). To be out for healthy nutrition it is essential to be aware of the metabolism induced by foods with different GI. Let’s have a closer look on this well-known but sometimes misinterpreted information.

GI is a measure of how much and how quickly certain foods raise your blood sugar. Some foods raise blood sugar more than other. Our bodies respond to high blood sugar with a high dose of insulin - a hormone which takes sugar out of the bloodstream and delivers it to the cells. High insulin (besides it makes you craving for more food) can enhance the risk for a number of undesired health conditions, like Metabolic Syndrome and Type ll Diabetes.

 

As you can see from this figure, meals containing carbohydrate-rich foods with a high GI give a more rapid and higher rise in blood glucose than meals with a low GI. Moreover, the low GI meal results in a moderate increase in blood glucose that is prolonged compared to that seen after a meal with high GI food, and thus provides prolonged energy for the body.

There are couple of tricks you can do to lower the GI value of your meal. The GI value can be reduced by the following:

• Combining high GI foods with low GI foods
• High protein content
• High fiber content
• Lemon (2 tablespoons of lemon may reduce GI of a meal with 30%)
• Fat (however it isn’t the best way for decreasing GI if you are looking for a low calorie solution).

It’s great, isn’t it? We don’t have to worry too much about consuming high GI food, because combining it with low GI foods levels out the overall GI value and results in an average GI value. And the overall GI value of different foods in a meal is what really matters. E.g. eating potato (high GI) with salad (low GI) lowers GI to an average value, so it is better to eat them together rather than eating potato in itself. Another good solution is to consume high GI carbohydrates with proteins (low GI) in order to decrease the GI of our meal.

Spelt has a perfect GI value
The vegetable foods are healthy and help losing weight, because their effect on the blood sugar and the insulin is moderate, beside this they are rich in fiber, vitamins and minerals. That is why spelt is very significant in this matter. Spelt has low GI, doesn’t increase the insulin production of pancreas much, so it offers the possibility of healthy nutrition and also can be very efficient support in special or in slimming diets. Spelt is a great solution to influence the insulin level favourably as spelt has very high protein level and it is rich in fiber. For more information on spelt check out our website: http://www.edensoriginal.com/en/why-spelt-good-4u/what-is-spelt

Finally here are some examples of GI values:

 

 

Note that there are a huge number of different GI tables with different GI values. The impact a food will have on the blood sugar depends on many other factors such as ripeness, cooking time, fiber and fat content, time of day, blood insulin levels, and recent activity. Use the Glycemic Index as a tool to improve your control of your insulin production at each meal.

Sources: 
www.thatsfit.com
www.glycemicindex.com
www.diabetesnet.com
www.medbio.info
www.mendosa.com
www.nutritiondata.self.com
www.elitefitness.com
www.montignac.com