Revised International Table of Glycemic Index (GI) and Glycemic Load (GL) Values—2008

People will want to know more about the glycemic load (GL) which is a way to count the impact of the allowable carbohydrates in a GAPS diet on ones glucose blood levels and eventually on ones waist size. Lets face it, if you go on GAPS diet and you have carbohydrate cravings you may load up on the allowable foods that are primarily carbohydrates, and you can get more symptoms and even gain weight. If you were overweight, and you were hoping to lose weight, you would say the diet doesn't work, and you would give up. The higher the blood glucose, the higher the insulin goes, and the higher the IGF a hormone that promotes inflammation, the basis of most of the symptoms and symptoms complexes/diseases associated with celiac and gluten sensitivity. 

There is a limit to how much carbs are allowable.To stop the cycle of inflammation, and carbohydrate cravings, I advise people to eat less than 25 points of the GL list, over the entire day. 

Thanks to a naturopathic doctor colleague  Dr. Mireille Fanous, I have been introduced to a definitive table produced by Professor Jennie Brand Miller of the University of Sydney. This work is an extension of the work of Dr. Jenner of the University of Toronto, Canada who is credited with the development of the glycemic index (GI), or impact of food on blood glucose.

David Mendosa works to defeat diabetes and has published Prof. Brand Millers' list of  2,480 food products and their GI and GL. This list will help guide you on choosing foods and their amounts that would be healthy.

He writes:

This is the definitive table for both the glycemic index and the glycemic load. I am able to reproduce it here courtesy of the author, Professor Jennie Brand-Miller of the University of Sydney. It is based on a table in different format but no more foods published December 2008 in Diabetes Care. However, only the abstract is free online there.

GI of 55 is low; GL of 10 is low.

This table includes the glycemic index and glycemic load of more than 2,480 individual food items. Not all of them, however, are available in the United States. They represent a true international effort of testing around the world.

The glycemic index (GI) is a numerical system of measuring how much of a rise in circulating blood sugar a carbohydrate triggers–the higher the number, the greater the blood sugar response. So a low GI food will cause a small rise, while a high GI food will trigger a dramatic spike. A list of carbohydrates with their glycemic values is shown below. A GI of 70 or more is high, a GI of 56 to 69 inclusive is medium, and a GI of 55 or less is low.

The glycemic load (GL) is a relatively new way to assess the impact of carbohydrate consumption that takes the glycemic index into account, but gives a fuller picture than does glycemic index alone. A GI value tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate turns into sugar. It doesn't tell you how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food. You need to know both things to understand a food's effect on blood sugar. That is where glycemic load comes in. The carbohydrate in watermelon, for example, has a high GI. But there isn't a lot of it, so watermelon's glycemic load is relatively low. A GL of 20 or more is high, a GL of 11 to 19 inclusive is medium, and a GL of 10 or less is low.

Lots of foods on the list are packaged foods and not sold in Canada, however it gives you an idea how a similar food product would impact your health. 

If you want to know more about how carbohydrates including fructose found in fruit causes chronic illness, watch this superb video by Dr. Lustig from University of California, San Francisco, called "Sugar: The Bitter Truth!"

To Your Health.

Dr. Barbara