What is the glycemic index? The glycemic index is a scale that rates a food’s ability to raise one’s blood sugar levels on a scale ranging from 0 to 110. Some foods have a faster release into the bloodstream and therefore are given a score higher up on the glycemic index spectrum. A high score could be categorized as anything above 70. For example, common table sugar, or sucrose, has a glycemic value of 110. If a food has a lower GI value, it will cause a more gradual elevation in blood sugar levels. This effect is desirable in most situations. A low GI value is categorized as anything below 55 and of course the median falls around 56-69. A good example of a low GI food would be raw apples. And even though the glycemic index is a pretty good indicator of which foods are advantageous to blood sugar levels, the best determinant of sugar release into the bloodstream is the glycemic load.
    The glycemic load is found by dividing the GI by 100 and then multiplying that number by the number of available grams of carbohydrates in a food(Total carbs - fiber in grams per serving). The reason why one also needs to consider the glycemic load of a food is because some foods, like carrots, would score poorly on the GI, but since their carbohydrate grams per serving are low, then those foods would be ruled favorably by their glycemic load score. For glycemic load, a high score would be 20, medium is 11-19, while a low score would be 10 and under. To get a great listing for the glycemic index/load of all sorts of foods, go to www.glycemicindex.com.
    Now that both glycemic load and glycemic index have been covered, why should they be of any importance? The reason is that your body only runs efficiently on large percentages of low to medium GL foods. Furthermore, a tangled web of illness and disease can be linked to a poor diet. If one were to eat a high glycemic-load meal, one’s bloodstream would become inundated with glucose, and, in turn, release a tremendous amount of insulin to accompany the glucose. Insulin is what transports glucose to the brain, muscles,  and liver. Once your body has been replenished, there will be left over glucose with no place to go. This is how fat stores are created and thus leads to obesity. Whatever can’t be used is stored away. Eventually, after years of such meals, the pancreas’ ability to secrete insulin practically becomes ruined. This is how type II diabetes arises. Suring a noted clinical study, women who ate a high glycemic-load diet were 37% more likely to develop type II diabetes within 6 years than women who ate a low glycemic -load diet. To make matters worse, those who eat high glycemic-load diets are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease due to the impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, elevated triglyceride concentration levels, and decreased “good cholesterol” levels. So, by not being aware and choosing high glycemic-load foods, one should expect, at one point or another, to pay the price. The body is ruined by eating such refined and nutritionally devoid foods, just as a fine, Italian sports car is ruined by fueling it with low grade gasoline. Be nice to your sports car and eat well.