Thread: Glycemic Load

By complete accident, I ran into a rather interesting article while looking up the nutritional information for Milton's whole wheat bread. It mentions that, basically, the GI index does not take into account 'standard' portions of food. Here's the relevant bit: (entire article)

The Glycemic index is not practical because it ignores other health benefits a food may offer, it doesn't take into account the effect of eating a food as part of a meal that contains other components, like protein and fat, and most notably, it does not take serving size into account. For instance, carrots have a GI of 93 (high), but that number is based on eight or 10 fasting subjects who had to eat one and a half pounds of carrots, since it takes that much to total 50 grams of digestible carbohydrates (total carbohydrates minus fiber, in grams). A more practical way to use the information in the Glycemic Index is to convert it to Glycemic Load.

Glycemic Load (GL) takes a standard serving size into account, rather than just a fixed amount of carbohydrate. It is calculated by dividing the Glycemic index score discussed earlier by 100, and multiplying the result by the amount of available carbohydrate in a standard serving. Therefore, carrots' GL= 93/100 x four grams carbohydrate = four. A GL of 10 or less is low, 11-19 is moderate, and 20 or more is high. That's good news for watermelon, too, since it turns out that although the GI is high at 72, the GL for a four-ounce serving is four-very low. Watermelon offers fiber, vitamin C, and lycopene, which helps protect against prostate cancer.

Wanted to hear some of your peoples' opinions on this.

It is a correct information.