GI Myths
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in Blogs
The Glycaemic Index of a food represents the time it takes for sugar to appear in the bloodstream after that food has been eaten. Obviously something like plain sugar requires little-to-no digesting and spikes the blood sugar really quickly. In comparison, a dense sourdough rye bread made from stoneground flour, would take rather longer to enter the blood stream. Interestingly and perhaps shockingly, Corn Flakes and very refined white bread have a higher GI than table sugar…… and these are not the worst breakfast items that many people choose!
So, to avoid the very sugary foods, GI is actually a very useful construct to have. But, how the food manufacturers use this term can actually be quite misleading. For example, Low GI Bread, now supplied by most supermarkets, is the bread of choice for many people. Some are better than others, but all of them are made out of wheat, which is an increasing food sensitivity and most of them have preservatives to make them last longer. Plus some of them aren't particularly low GI. Contrast this with the fresh wholegrain and rye breads that you buy at the counter and at specialist bakeries - if you pick them up and they are the weight of a brick, you can be guaranteed that they are very low GI, but they won't market themselves as such.
Some Low GI products are not actually low GI at all - the food should have a GI value below 50 to be able to make this claim. But, I've seen products loaded with sugar and refined grains advertised as low GI - probably just lower GI than some of their competitors - so be careful with label claims - the most important thing is to read the list of ingredients and you'll get a better idea of how good the product is.
This is an extract of a larger article that was published in the Go Multi magazine.