Understanding Glycemic Load - An introduction to low – glycemic eating

Glycemic indexing (GI) is now somewhat familiar in Australia and New Zealand . Sydney University has done a lot of groundbreaking research, for details including a full list of GI's for foods go to http://www.glycemicindex.com/ .

However the reference to glycemic load (GL) is something few people understand.

In order to understand GL, first we must define GI. Every food that contains any carbohydrates can be measured for both its GI and GL. Foods without carbohydrates – such as meat, fish and poultry, are still 0 for both GI and GL and are therefore not listed in any of the materials.

Measuring GI is simple. Normally subjects consume 50 grams of a given food with some level of carbohydrate, then their blood sugar is taken at two or four hours (or both) after eating. Each person tested will have some variance in the response of sugar and insulin to that food but an average is calculated for the total test group. The baseline for measuring the index is either glucose (blood sugar) or white bread. GI indicates how much a food raises blood sugar.

Why we deposit new fat on our bodies and why we stop converting stored fat into energy is a hormonal process directly tied to GI and GL. If your blood sugar rises too high due to the GL of your foods, the hormonal process that converts stored fat to energy will shut off.

Depending on the individual, it may stay shut off for many hours no matter what else you do. Thus, high-glycemic food or overabundance of low-glycemic food that exceeds the load amount you just ate becomes new stored fat on your body. Older stored fat stays where it is. Regardless of fat content, high-glycemic load turn off the fat-burning process. Therefore, no matter what you eat, it becomes fat.

Glycemic load is the load or stress on your pancreas from the volume of carbohydrate in specific foods. An example is raw carrots, you would eventually load so much carbohydrate by volume that this low-glycemic food would create a high glycemic load.

White potatoes are another example. They a very carbohydrate dense and have almost no fibre to offset the carbohydrates. Thus, no matter what amount you eat or how you prepare them, they will be high-glycemic and have a high glycemic load.

The GI of a food times the amount of carbohydrate equals the GL.

Eating too much of a good thing can be bad and, as you can see, GL is very important to your health.

	Here is a really helpful little book by Professor Jennie Brand-Miller written for Aust.,/NZ.. a great shoppers guide and a good aid for everyone starting on Osolean.
Here is a new safe and natural low GI sugar replacement