Seriously, like, if I wanted to buy something at the grocery store that was say a dark chocolate raspberry bar, or mac and cheese, but was on the GI diet, how would I tell?
Seriously, like, if I wanted to buy something at the grocery store that was say a dark chocolate raspberry bar, or mac and cheese, but was on the GI diet, how would I tell?
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You use this chart and estimate based on the top three ingredients in the food product:
https://glycemic-index.net/glycemic-index-chart/
But in reality, glycemic index is strongly dependent on the food matrix, so different configurations will change how quickly or slowly your body will process it into sugars. A true glycemic index value is calculated using human subjects, which gets expensive quickly and is usually not done by food companies.
It’s not part of standard nutrition information printed on food, so the only real way would be to look it up and hope there is information on it.
The amount of carbohydrates (fast digesting) vs fats and protein (slow digesting) and fiber (slows down digestion) would be a decent proxy. Tracking macronutrients is probably better anyways.
You really can’t. The glycemic index is built based on taking the blood from people after they’ve fasted and then eaten a specific amount of only one food. It tells you how fast that food is converted to sugar in your blood, but any time you combine foods the whole thing goes out the window.
Additionally, the glycemic index is based on an average of a large number of participants, who’s individual response to different foods often varies quite a lot. At the end of the day, if you’re worried about your blood sugar, you’ll need to buy a monitor and check regularly.
So basically what you want to do is to learn about the gi index of an ingredient, estimate the proportion of the ingredient in the whole food item and make a rough estimate. That is about the best you can do tbh.
Say I got a bunch of scrambled egg, I put it on toast. I would estimate how much scrambled egg I have, and even out the gi index with the toast. Eggs have 0 gi and white toast has around 80ish, so a 1:1 proportion of egg and toast would be around 40-50ish.
But keep in mind that many other factors can change the gi index. Other comments have explained this. Basically what you what to do is to balance out the high gi index food with the low, and learn where the “hidden traps” are in foods that look healthy but actually loaded with sugar etc.