Glycemic Load vs. Glycemic Index

This is the area that I find the greatest misunderstanding about macronutrients and the one in which we have gone most wrong in the kinds of foods that we're making available in this culture. So I would urge you to become really familiarized with the concepts of glycemic index and glycemic load. Glycemic load is the more useful one to focus on because it takes into account the actual amount of carbohydrate to eat. If you only pay attention to glycemic index, you wind up teaching people not to eat carrots or beets because they have a very high glycemic index and that is wrong nutritional advice. Although the carbohydrate in these vegetables is high in glycemic index, the content of carbohydrate in the vegetable is not great. There is a lot of fiber and water there as well. In order to eat enough carrots to disturb blood sugar, you might have to eat a pound and a half in a sitting and most people don't do that. Carrots and beets are sources of highly protective phytonutrients in the form of pigments there. So glycemic load is a better list to become familiar with and remember also that what you are concerned about is the glycemic load of a meal so it’s the average of glycemic load of all the carbohydrate elements in the meal. This gives you some practical techniques for blunting the effect of some high glycemic load foods on sugar. For example, if you want to have a waffle occasionally, smother it with blueberries which have a low glycemic load, and then the average of that meal will be moderate instead of just eating a waffle with syrup on it. There are interesting distinctions in forms of carbohydrates that are worth knowing about. Sushi rice, sticky rice, has a significantly higher glycemic load than basmati rice which has dry, separate grains because of a chemical difference in the starch. Waxy, new potatoes have a lower glycemic load than starchy, flowery potatoes - these are useful things to know about. So there are a lot of nuances but this is very important information.