Ask Dr. Denton: The Glycemic Index - Nature's FBI 'Fat Body Index'

Virginia Beach, Va (Catholic Online) - Over the past five years multiple diets have been presented using some form of the glycemic index as a measure of good verses bad carbohydrates. The value used to determine good verses bad carbohydrates is based largely on the glycemic index of individual foods. So what is the glycemic index and how is it nature's FBI?

The glycemic index or the "GI" is a ranking of carbohydrates on a scale from 0 to 100 according to the extent of which they raise blood sugar levels after eating. The lower the GI number, the slower the body absorbs the carbohydrate and the higher the GI number the faster the body absorbs the carbohydrate. The faster a carbohydrate is absorbed into the bloodstream, the faster it is converted into sugar and vise versa. The conversion of carbohydrates into sugar is what the body uses as fuel.

Understandably, we have to have carbohydrates to function. In an ideal world, our daily intake of carbohydrates would be equal the amount of fuel needed to get us through the day. Like most individuals, there usually is not enough time in the day to spend preparing well balanced meals or even time to shop for a well balanced meal. Most individuals spend most of their time driving through fast food restaurants or purchasing pre-made meals to get their daily intake of nutrition. The difficulty with this type of diet is most of these meals are loaded with foods that have a high GI.

So what happens with a diet of largely high GI foods? The rapid conversion of high GI carbohydrates verses the slow conversion of the low GI carbohydrates usually leads to extra sugar or fuel in the blood stream. What does a body do when there is extra fuel? The body is signaled to "store" the excess fuel to use at a later time. Sounds great, except where do you think that excess fuel gets deposited? In all the wrong places! Unfortunately, our current culture does not need to store that much fuel as we did in times were there was not a drive through restaurant or even a car to drive you to the restaurant.

Consequently, this has lead to the epidemic of obesity in our society of the past 10 - 20 years. Individuals just keep putting on the inches, but do not know exactly how or why this is happening. So how is the glycemic index nature's FBI? If used correctly, individuals can begin slowing or even stopping the progressive addition of weight by focusing on foods that have a lower GI. In this way, the GI becomes a natural way to gauge an individual food's potential to add excess weight to the body...hence Nature's "Fat Body Index"!

Listed below is a link to the article that lists virtually all the GI values of various foods. The table below lists some examples of foods within their classification. There is also a graphic with this article that demonstrates the rate of glucose or fuel production from consumed carbohydrates after a meal.

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Link to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article on "International table of glycemic index and glycemic load values: 2002" http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/76/1/5

Table 1
Classification-----GI Range-----Food Examples
High GI----------77 - 99--------Corn flakes, croissant, white bread, candy, baked potato
Medium GI------56 - 69--------Brown rice, sweet potato, whole wheat products in general
Low GI----------55 or less-------Most fruits, vegetables, meats,

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