Glycaemic Index - GI and Combinations

FOOD COMBINATIONS AND THE GLYCAEMIC INDEX

So what happens when you consume a real life meal? Well, much of the science goes either down the drain, or is impractical. What you first need to understand is that both proteins and carbohydrates are going to release sugar into the blood stream and release an insulin response. When you look at the glycaemic index rating of a food this is based upon the digestion of exactly fifty grams of that particular food group. That would be easy to consume fifty grams of carbohydrate of bread, and much, much more difficult to actually consume fifty grams of carrot. And in the real world you would be eating far more than just fifty grams of bread based carbohydrate and so releasing much more sugar into the blood and a far greater insulin output. But essentially, what happens when you consume combinations of foods is that the GI factor evens out across the board. You must measure the quantity of the carbohydrates you are eating and work out the percentage of the total amount of carbohydrate for the meal. Next you must work out the GI of the food and add up all of the totals and divide them by the factor in relation to the quantity of that carbohydrate - giving you an average of the GI total of that meal.

Here is a very simplified example.

Say you were to eat equal carbohydrate portions of rice, soya beans and raisins as a desert. You eat fifty grams of each food group. That makes them equally 33.3% of the meal.

Your individual GI ratings are as follows:-

Rice 70

Beans 15

Raisins 68

This gives you a combined total of 153. Your three food groups are of equal quantities and so you are going to divide this figure by exactly 3. This gives you a meal combination GI factor of 51. The science suggests that although the raisins and rice are of a high glycaemic reaction, the beans are slow releasing and will cause the meal to balance out a little lower than you may expect. This method becomes trickier with more combinations of foods and proteins and varying quantities, as you will not have to divide the total amount just by how many foods you eat - this is because the GI scores are based on 50grams of a food. You may be eating 10 grams of raisins and 100 grams of rice. This makes the e GI scale, sometimes confusing and a little inferior. You should however do your best. Some knowledge is far better than no knowledge. You will go a long way to improving your health and your physique by eating according to a lower GI factor diet, and lower the GI totals of your meals. You will go light years ahead of yourself if you combine, both the GI scale and information, along with the latest research of insulin response and the insulin index.