Good and Bad Foods for Blood Sugar Level (Part #1 )
If you have diabetes/pre-diabetes condition, you know you need to monitor your carbohydrate intake. But different carbohydrate-containing foods affect blood sugar differently.
To measure how fast a certain food causes an increase of blood sugar level, a term called Glycemic index (GI) is used. The glycemic index assigns a numeric score between 0 and 100 to a food based on how drastically it makes your blood sugar rise. The higher a food’s glycemic index, the faster blood sugar rises after eating that food.
Foods are classified based on their GI score in the following way:
➽ Low glycemic index (GI of 55 or less): Most fruits and vegetables, lentils, beans, minimally processed grains, low-fat dairy foods, and nuts.
➽ Moderate glycemic index (GI 56 to 69): Sweet potatoes, French fries, Basmati rice.
➽ High glycemic index (GI of 70 or higher): Jasmine rice, White bread, Cornflakes, most crackers, cakes, most packaged breakfast cereals.
According to Harvard School of Public Health: [Reference 1]
☀ Foods with a low glycemic index have been shown to help control type 2 diabetes and improve weight loss.
☀ Eating many foods with high GI cause powerful spikes in blood sugar, which can lead to an increased risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease and overweight
Harvard Medical School provides GI for a list of foods: [2] [3]
Oregon State University provides a list of 100+ common foods with different food caregories: [4]
The University of Sydney maintains a searchable database of foods and their corresponding glycemic indices. [5]
( For a basic search there, you can simply type the name of the food or drink that you are looking for and click on the Search button or Enter on your keyboard)
