1 August 2006

Making the Most of GI News

Your questions answered
If you have posted a question in our newsletter, be assured that the GI Group will answer this as soon as possible. We welcome your views about our articles and other reader’s suggestions. Please POST your comments and questions on the site.

Want to search past issues of GI News?
Want to search the GI News Archive for a particular topic, food or recipe? Make the most of our co-branded search feature with Google. Simply enter the term in the space provided and press SEARCH.

Want to print a copy of just one article?
Click on the article name in the right-hand column under PREVIOUS POSTS. You will arrive at the page you have chosen. Select PRINT and you will find that you can print just the information you want.

Translating GI News and www.glycemicindex.com
If you would prefer to read GI News or a page from glycemicindex in a language other than English, there is a very easy way to translate them (or any site for that matter), using a service provided by Altavista called ‘Babel Fish’. Simply head over to www.babelfish.altavista.com and copy and paste a block of text into the first window (up to 150 words), or enter the website address to translate an entire page into the ‘Translate a Web Page’ box. Next, select which language you would like the English text translated to from the drop-down menu. Click the Translate button and Babel Fish will do all the work for you in just a few seconds.

Copyright
GI News endeavours to check the veracity of news stories cited in this free e-newsletter by referring to the primary source, but cannot be held responsible for inaccuracies in the articles so published. GI News provides links to other World Wide Web sites as a convenience to users, but cannot be held responsible for the content or availability of these sites. This document may be copied and distributed provided the source is cited as GI News and the information so distributed is not used for profit.

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your newsletter would be much more useful to me if the articles focused more on Glycemic Load and less on Glycemic Index. It is very distracting to have to stop and do the extra calculations required. In my opinion, Glycemic Load is the more effective concept.

GI Group said...

Hi,

This from our February issue:

Should you use GI or GL and does it really matter?

Your blood glucose rises and falls when you eat a food or meal containing carbohydrate. How high it rises and how long it remains high depends on the quality of the carbohydrate (its glycemic index value or GI) as well as the quantity of carbohydrate in your meal. Researchers at Harvard University came up with a term that combines these two factors—glycemic load (GL).

Some people think that GL should be used instead of GI when comparing foods because it reflects the glycemic impact of both the quantity and quality of carbohydrate in a food. But more often than not, it’s low GI not low GL that predicts good health outcomes. So which one should you use?

We are often asked this question. Our advice is to stick with the GI rather than GL—the reason being that following the low glycemic load (GL) route can lead you straight to a low carb diet: ie fatty meats and butter, for example have a low GL. .

But if you eat plenty of low GI foods, you’ll find that you are automatically reducing the GL of your diet and at the same time you’ll feel fuller for longer with these satisfying carbohydrate-containing foods, as well as improve many health parameters.

We also emphasise that there’s no need to get overly technical about this. Think of the GI as a tool allowing you to choose one food over another in the same food group—the best bread to choose, the best cereal to choose etc.—and don’t get bogged down with figures. A low GI diet is about eating a wide variety of healthy foods that fuel our bodies best—on the whole these are the less processed and wholesome foods that will provide carbs in a slow release form.

The take-home message:

1) Slow carbs, not low carbs
2) Use GI to identify the best carbohydrate choices.
3) Take care with portion size with carb-rich foods to limit the overall GL of your diet.

Anonymous said...

Hi,
Thanks for all of your effort in producing the newsletter, I find it really helpful.
I noticed that in the May 2006 issue you listed a GI for Oat mountain bread (76) in the newsletter. However, I can't find this in the GI database (even just searching for bread won't bring it up). Is this a reliable GI value for this food? What brand was it? Have any other varieties been tested? I live in Australia and have been eating the rye and oat varieties of the brand available here and would love to know their GI.
Thanks, Rose

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but I still can't figure out how to print one article (eg the article about coffee).
You wrote "click on the name of the article in the right hand column".

But the article isn't there!!!! Am I crazy, or just slow? RON

Anonymous said...

I don't want to miss any of this.
Can I "Print" it where the words come out in nice bold form?

I cannot find a place that I can punch for the "PRINT" Version.

Thanks.

Regards.

Beverly Aldridge
bnwaldridge@cox.net

Anonymous said...

Please include more AMERICAN Brands in your listings on the GI....I am diabetic and find your information very helpful in creating my food plans. I'm new to this. Thanks

Anonymous said...

Re American brands: We would love to include more, but we can only include the food products that have been tested AND the manufacturer agrees to release the results. Watch this space. We know there are more in the pipeline. What can you do? Pester and hassle the manufacturers of your favourite products to get their foods GI independently tested according to the standardised procedure and allow us to include the information on our database.