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Help! Low GI foods versus grams of sugar per portion

T

Tinkerbell1972

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Buckinghamshire
I was advised by my diabetic nurse to keep my sugar below 5 grams per portion of food, but also been advised to eat low GI foods. However I have seen that, for instance, Special K is low GI and Weetabix is high GI, but Weetabix is lower in sugar than Special K per portion!
Which is better to follow, can anyone help?
Thanks!


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Are you sure that Weetabix is high GI? Because I found the following:
Defending the ad, Weetabix said the GI claim was based on the cereal when eaten with milk, as this was the way the "vast majority" of consumers ate the product.

The company said Weetabix's GI, when eaten with semi-skimmed milk, was tested independently in 2005 using the standard international protocol with a result of 47, noting that the British Nutrition Foundation regarded a GI level below 55 as low.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) accepted that Weetabix was a low GI food when eaten with milk but it also accepted that Weetabix had a "mid-range" GI when eaten on its own.
Click to expand...

If anything, Weetabix having a higher GI is likely due to the fact that sugar/sucrose has a fairly low GI (68) compared to starchy foods because it is only 50% BG-active glucose (the other half being fructose which doesn't affect BG much), which makes it fairly useless as an indicator of healthiness (the implication - that food with added sugar is healthier - is absurd)
 
I don't think either are particularly low GI. To be honest I don't think that many (any) manufactured cold cereals are particularly low GI. The GI of these products is a bit of a minefield!

I used the University of Sydney GI site: http://www.glycemicindex.com/index.php
This is a really useful site about the GI and a large data base of GIs. Unfortunately , it only contains a few manufactured products from the UK.

There are two records for Weetabix with similar results.

Weetabix™ wheat biscuits (plain flaked wheat) GI 75
Weetabix™, plain flaked wheat biscuits (Weetabix of Canada Ltd., Thornhill, Canada) GI 74

Special K is known to be formulated differently in different countries. Of the 3 tests in the GI data base only one is moderate . That is from Australia.

Special K™ breakfast cereal (Australia) GI 54
Special K™ breakfast cereal (US) GI 69
Special K™ breakfast cereal, (France)GI 84

If you compare the Aussie and UK ingredients lists they are slightly different so not exactly the same product. In particular sugar comes before Wheat gluten on the UK list and after it on the Aussie one . (Ingredients in both countries are ordered by the amount on the product. I would think therefore that the UK product would have a higher GI

What low GI actually means is interesting. The researchers at Sydney have refined their views in recent years and now feel that a low GI diet should be defined as one that has an overall GI of 45 or less. (more detail here)
http://ginews.blogspot.fr/2013/01/whats-new.html
 
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