Australia leading in glycemic index awareness
CTV.ca News Staff

A growing number of nutritionists believe that the current fad of cutting carbs won't work in the long term. And Australia is leading the world in teaching its citizens about the glycemic index and how it might save them from heart disease and diabetes.

Helen Goddard was headed to developing Type 2 diabetes with the way she was eating. Now she's part of a national experiment in Australia to see if the epidemic of diabetes, heart disease and obesity can be averted by getting people to eat more low glycemic foods.

Prof. Jennie Brand Miller of the University of Sydney says Australians seem to be getting the message and are demanding to know more about how their favourite foods rate on the glycemic index.

"I think the food industry is preparing for a time that is coming very soon when the glycemic index will be allowed, where the consumer wants to see it," she says. "And the well prepared companies will have the data to put it straight on the label."

The glycemic index measures the effect of carbohydrates -- starches and sugars -- on our blood sugar levels.

Dramatic rises lead to high insulin levels and that has been linked to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and more recently, some forms of cancer. Low glycemic diets, containing mostly fruits, whole grains and vegetables, are linked to lower disease rates.

Most unprocessed foods such as vegetables and fruits have been tested and have been found to have a low glycemic index. But researchers say not enough research has been done on the processed food that lines our store shelves, many of which may rate as high glycemic. Most of those products haven't been tested or labeled.

But now, Australia has become one of the first countries in the world to encourage food makers to start labelling the GI levels of their foods.

Some critics call the GI concept too complex for most consumers to understand. But some health officials such as Alan Varclay of Diabetes Australia think they've simplified the GI message.

"We just use the terms low, medium or high GI, telling people that it's just a matter of substituting low GI carbohydrates for high GI carbohydrates."

And Australians seem to be listening. Many say the GI index is something they now pay attention to.

Helen Goddard says she now avoids high GI foods, and eats more low GI carbohydrates. She says her dietary changes are not only healthier, they're more satisfying.

"Most low GI foods are more filling and more satisfying and I get full faster and longer I'm not always looking for food," she says.

Well, its a start.

Val

Definitively. And the Glycemic Index is much easier for the main stream to swallow than the concept of low carb, so it has a better chance of being embraced

What really annoys me is that the Nutritionists/Government consider everything "too complex" for us to understand. I actually heard one Nutritionist on TV talking about LC Foods, and he stated that you should just count total carbs, because net carbs are just "too confusing." I'm sorry, but if you graduated HS, and can't do simple subtraction...then our Educational system is worse off than I thought.

The problem with GI is that you must know the GI of a food before going to the supermarket. There's simply no way to figure it out from a nutrition label. So, until the food industry starts labeling GI on packages, this will never catch on IMO.

Dan

EXACTLY cc48510, that's the feeling that I had while reading that. I especially like that quote: «Some critics call the GI concept too complex for most consumers to understand. But some health officials such as Alan Varclay of Diabetes Australia think they've simplified the GI message.»

Is it really that complicated to check the GI of a food before choosing to eat it?

As always they address their messages to the lowest common denominator .... so that means they are gearing their nutritional message to sub-literate high-school drop outs with learning disablities. No wonder the "fat makes you fat" message took off so well.

Then I must be a sub-literate high-school drop out as I believed for many years that fat makes you fat. Of course another explanation may be that I was foolish is believing the government to begin with on what was good for me without demanding to see the data that the fat makes you fat propaganda was based on.

I believed the same as well... we were all fooled. We believed they had our best interest in mind. I am less naive now.

I was commenting on the powers-that-be assuming that the general population is too stupid to understand anything more complex than a gross over-simplification like "fat makes you fat". Wasn't commenting on people buying into the message. It would have been difficult to resist since the message was so widespread it became downright propaganda.

Well, I hope they can figure the GI out, because if you look at the U Sydney database on GI values, which I believe is the principal source, it is almost impossible to arrive at a figure. For example, there are all sorts of brands and types of white rice listed there, and they all have hugely varying GI values. So its one thing to understand the theory, and its another to figure out what the GI actually is. Check it out:http://diabetes.about.com/library/m...gi/ngilists.htm


Val

I've skimmed through the Databases before...The wide variation is one reason I believe GI should be prominently listed on the label. And, it should be a range such as "19 ± 7" or "12 - 26," not "Low," "High" like alot of manufacturers seem to like. Different variants of the same product can have widely different GI values. For example, rice grown in Asia tend to have a significantly lower GI than rice grown in America. Rice grown in Africa and the Middle East have the highest GI. But, food products are rarely marked with enough information to know which variant it is or where it may have been grown. If they listed the GI on the label, we'd be able to chose the variants and brands which have the lowest GI.

Let's start with the example of White Rice. White Rice grown in Bangladesh has a low glycemic index of 39, while White Rice grown in Turkey has an off the charts glycemic index of 139. The difference is the ratio of the starches. Bangladeshi Rice is higher in Amylose (27%,) while Turkish Rice is low in Amylose. Low-Amylose Rices range from 83 - 139, while High-Amylose Rices range from 39-61.

Potatoes are another perfect example. For example:



The method of peraparation also makes a very big difference:

Makes low carbing seem like a walk in the park. I wouldn't mind the low/medium/high Gi classifications, providing that these were spelled out in some legal, enforced manner as to exactly what this means numerically for the folks doing the labeling. That way if it says low, then this means less than 50, or whatever.

I think it would be poetic justice if poor countries like Bangladesh suddenly have a windfall due to GI of their rice...of course no doubt you would have to pay more for it on your shelves due to the US
tendency to subsidize homegrown products. (World trade agreements have also meant that poorer countries end up being flooded with US grown produce and can't compete... some poor Korean farmer suicided in front of the WTO meeting due to this issue)

Anyway, I'm all for knowing what the GI is on various products, along with the carb count.

Val