Low Glycemic Diet
By paradise philippines | July 18, 2008
The Low Glycemic Diet (GL) is a ranking system for carbohydrate content in food portions based on their low glycemic diet index (GI) and the portion size.
The usefulness of low glycemic diet load is based on the idea that a low glycemic diet index food consumed in small quantities would give the same effect as larger quantities of a low glycemic diet index food on blood sugar. For example, white rice is somewhat high GI, so eating 50g of white rice at one sitting would give a particular glucose curve in the blood, while 25g would give the same curve but half the height. Since the peak height is probably the most important parameter, multiplying the amount of carbohydrates in a food serving by the glycemic index gives an idea of how much effect an actual portion of food has on blood sugar level.
A study of weight loss comparing low GL to high GL diets has found no significant differences between the two, indicating that excessive attention to GL within weightloss programs is misplaced and that a range of foods with widely varying GL values can be part of a healthy diet.
Low glycemic diet load for a single serving of a food can be calculated as the quantity (in grams) of its carbohydrate content, multiplied by its GI, and divided by 100. For example, a 100g slice serving of watermelon with a GI of 72 and a carbohydrate content of 5g (it contains a lot of water) makes the calculation 5*0.72=3.6, so the GL is 3.6. A food with a GI of 100 and a carbohydrate content of 10g has a GL of 10 (10*1=10), while a food with 100g carbohydrate and a GI of just 10 also has a GL of 10 (100*0.1=10).
Data on GI and GL comes from the University of Sydney (Human Nutrition Unit) GI database at through.
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