4 ms·
Spreadsheet of the glycemic indices of 4,000 foods as measured by the NCI [xls]
- keefe 17y agointeresting, looks legit. I love posts like this, just here's something useful that I'm really unlikely to come upon on my own.
- carbocation 17y agoMore details for the interested: http://riskfactor.cancer.gov/tools/glycemic/ http://riskfactor.cancer.gov/tools/glycemic/
- herdrick 17y agoSigh. Glycemic index doesn't really tell the story. Eat whole foods, avoid sugar.
- pizza 17y agoIt's kinda like BMI. It tells you what you probably knew already just by looking at the subject.
- carbocation 17y agoWould you have expected that people who are slightly overweight have a lower mortality than those who are of normal weight? Though BMI is imperfect, it does allow for interesting observations such as that. I would be very enthusiastic about a noninvasive, cheap, rapid, and accurate way of measuring whole-body (and especially abdominal) fat, of course!
- herdrick 17y agoYou're more right than you know. BMI and GI have exactly the same problem: they aren't used because they measure the right things very well but because they are easy to calculate.
- lukesandberg 17y agoExactly GI tells at most one fact about a food, and food is more than just its sugar density or its fat content. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritionism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritionism
- carbocation 17y agoWhile the glycemic index doesn't tell the whole story, it is more actionable in today's environment than "eat whole foods, avoid sugar." There are plenty of whole foods that are little better than sugar, and some processed foods that are not horrible. Plus, if you don't have the luxury of eating whole foods for each meal, the glycemic index can help you choose the lesser among evil alternatives. That something is imperfect does not make it useless.
- herdrick 17y agoWhen you focus on a flawed measurement you get distorted results, proportionate to the amount of flaw. GI is only moderately correlated with "good foods". I predict focusing on it will end up causing more harm than good. When you can pour oil onto a food to improve it's rating, that's an easy rating to game.
- carbocation 17y agoI don't think I'm correctly understanding your argument. To me, it seems that you are saying that ignorance of the effect that a food has on your blood glucose levels is superior to knowledge of that effect. That seems silly to me, so I assume I must be interpreting your position uncharitably. Can you help me understand your stance on this information a little better?
- herdrick 17y agoThe problem is that this is yet another revolution which reverses the conclusions and advice of the previous one. It's not a revolution like modern physics, which qualified and re-explained classical mechanics. It's more like the French revolution. Off with the heads of the anti-fatists, salute the anti-carb flag... until the next reversal which will surely reject the conclusions of the current one. The situation is much like with artifical intelligence in the early days - trying to boil the problem down to a few simple rules. Until we are willing to accept the huge complexity involved in the problem we do more harm than good. There is no single useful scale on which to judge foods. (See lukesandberg's comment and link below.) In the meantime I recommend you eat like a caveman.
- arvindnatarajan 17y agoAs an online spreadsheet - http://viewer.zoho.com/docs/sFTcP http://viewer.zoho.com/docs/sFTcP