Unlike most diets, the low glycemic diet isn’t a fad. It was developed at the University of Sydney to help diabetics have better blood glucose control. Although it was developed this reason, it’s also helpful in weight control. In the low glycemic diet (also known as the glycemic index diet or GI diet), all foods containing carbohydrates are assigned a rating – the glycemic index (GI). It’s not a measurement as such, it is just a comparison to glucose, which is assigned a rating of 100.
How the low glycemic diet helps with weight control
No matter what form we eat carbohydrates in, they are broken down in our digestive systems and eventually end up being single units of glucose, which are then absorbed into our blood. We need our blood to have a certain level of glucose to give us the energy we need for everything we do. But too much glucose in our blood isn’t good, so our bodies keep our blood glucose within strict limits. If the level rises too much, the glucose must be removed from the blood (by the hormone insulin) and stored as fat. To make matters worse, the sudden drop in blood sugar can, unfortunately, cause cravings for more sugar. This means that the cycle keeps repeating.
So, what we want is for the glucose from our food to be absorbed slowly into our blood, rather than all at once. A good rule of thumb is that complex carbohydrates (pasta, rice etc.) will be released more slowly than simple carbs (fruit sugar, added sugar in processed foods etc.). This is because complex carbs are made up of long chains of sugars that are slow to break down. Simple carbs or “sugars” on the other hand are made up of one or 2 units. However, the glycemic index gives us a much better understanding of how quickly different carbs get absorbed. Some complex carbs can be surprisingly high GI and some simple carbs surprisingly low GI.
Why a low glycemic diet is beneficial
If you eat foods with a low GI, they will digest more slowly. Sugar will be released at a steady rate into the blood stream, avoiding blood sugar highs. In turn, this avoids fat storage and subsequent sugar craving. This has the obvious benefit of helping with weight control, but that’s not the only benefit. Eating foods which cause high blood sugar can damage long term health and increase the risk of illnesses such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Planning a low glycemic index (GI) diet isn’t as straightforward as planning a low calorie diet. For a start, nutrition panels on food packaging don’t show GI. There are plenty of books and online resources which give GI tables, but these aren’t always consistent with each other. However, there are a few basics that everyone agrees on.
- Wholegrains are lower GI than white carbohydrate foods.
- Vegetables are generally low GI, but potatoes are fairly high.
- Fibre reduces GI, so many fruits have a low to medium rating despite their high sugar content.
- Fruit juice on the other hand doesn’t have much fibre so will be higher GI.
- What you eat with carbs can modify their GI. Fibre, protein and fat all slow down carbohydrate digestion.
As a simple guide, here are 10 ideas for a low glycemic diet:
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- Use sweet potato for baking, mashing, chips etc. instead of white potato
- Chose wholemeal or 50/50 bread
- Choose wholemeal rice and pasta, or cook a mixture of wholemeal and white
- Add beans or vegetables to meals to increase fibre content
- Avoid high sugar breakfast cereals and choose high fibre ones like muesli, porridge, Weetabix
- Instead of sugary snacks, snack on fresh or dried fruit, low glycemic cereal bars or dark chocolate
- Eat protein at each meal
- Drink smoothies instead of juice (because they are made from the whole fruit)
- If you snack on biscuits, choose ones made with wholegrains (like digestives and oat biscuits)
- Try to eat fruit as fresh as possible, because more starch turns to sugar as it ripens, increasing the GI.
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