Carb content or glycaemic response?

I have not looked at recent papers on glycaemic content of foods, but when the initial work was done, for some extraordinary reason they did not measure blood sugar for more than two hours. We know of course that some foods take much longer to be broken down to glucose molecules, as with some foods it happens farther along the gut. When the glucose release does happen, I would expect to see a rise in blood sugar in diabetics- it would just happen later. There may be new evidence that I have not seen, but I regard glycaemic indexing foods in the same light as food combining and blood type diets, I don't think there is any scientific evidence to support them and I would always rely on the carbohydrate content of food to determine whether or not I will eat it.

In the small print at the bottom of the chart it says " it is the glycemic response not the carbohydrate content of food that matters in diabetes and obesity" which is confusing because the carbohydrate content must have been used to work out the Glycemic Load.

Glycemic response. Not load. Response is personal to the load or carb content. Hence some of us cope with a little of some things that spike others. Well that’s my take anyway but I agree a bit confusing. I don’t actually find these charts at all useful or understandable but that’s just me.

All too much hassle for me. I just choose not to eat any carbs. Job done

Jim Lahey said:

All too much hassle for me. I just choose not to eat any carbs. Job done

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The simplest solutions are usually the most effective.

pdmjoker said:

I'm doing a keto diet and recently came across all the Sugar Equivalent Infographics by Dr David Unwin here: https://phcuk.org/sugar/

For example,


which mentions his paper about glycaemic response vs carb content. I've not looked at it yet. Any comments?

(Glad to see apricots are OK!)

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My take on it is that individual response to carbs is what we need to know because T2's are all different.
Thus we need to test our own BG responses - so the 'Sugar Equivalent Infographics' are just a rough guide to make people aware of the problem and get them started in improving their diet.

I think the science behind the Glycemic Index is not very strong. As this site shows, individuals responses to different foods varies.
However I think the work done with these sort of graphics by DrUnwin has been very useful at showing his patients and other medical professionals and politicians that many so called healthy foods contain the equivalent of many spoons of sugar. I think he is having a positive impact on changing ideas without frightening his colleagues.

Why would we think that the Glycaemic Indexes are just a single value and not a range of values? There would be some individual variation, surely? And thus for any given Glycaemic Load there will be variations in Glycaemic response.
By going low carb these variations presumably become less relevant, although looking at the Insulin Index, the next derivative on the GI- GL bandwagon, the relevance and influence of protein and fat comes in.