Talk:Glycemic load

Statistics Reported in the Table?
Why in the world is there a band of potential glycemic loads with a plus or minus at the end? Besides being a very unconventional way to write statistics, it's super difficult to read. A much better alternative would be to write the median or the mean and then report the standard errors. If nobody corrects this from the original source (which I can't view because it has a paywall), I'm going to just take the simple average of the two bounds and increase the errors to reflect the change. E.g. something like $\mu \pm error$ (mu +- error). 160.39.16.142 (talk) 01:51, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Numbers for rice in this article just plain wrong?
The article states carbohydrate content by weight for boiled white rice to be around 75%. This is utter nonsense. The resulting GL of 50 to 70 is equally out of touch with reality. Checking at http://www.glycemicindex.com for various white rice confirms this. One example: http://www.glycemicindex.com/foodSearch.php?id=268&ak=detail lists one type of white rice, boiled, as GL 16 for 150 grams, i.e 10.5 for 100 grams. 195.18.254.162 (talk) 11:42, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Basis for GL
GL corrects GI for the amount of carbohydrate in a food: it assumes that you will eat more of a food that has more carbohydrate. What is the justification for this? If I eat 50g of white rice am I likely to eat only 5g of watermelon? I don't think so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.228.232.114 (talk) 06:35, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Therein lies the problem with glycemic load: the serving/portion size is purely arbitrary. This makes comparisons of GL's based on different portion sizes meaningless. They need to settle on a standard portion size and normalize everything to that. That way you could compare 50g of rice to 50g of watermelon. That would remove the assumption about how much of a given food someone might eat, an assumption which is largely guesswork. GL calculated as I have described could be scaled up or down based on the end user's own assumptions about portion size in relation to the standard portion size, e.g. if the standard portion were 100 g, the GL would be divided by 2 to obtain the GL for a 50 g portion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.197.211.2 (talk) 03:17, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The present Wikipedia page for Glycemic Load shows GL as a dimensionless quantity. This seems correct based on the dimensionless GI index multiplied by the fraction of carbohydrate in the mass of food stuff. This also seems clear and is, effectively, the normalisation suggested above. However, academic articles discussing GL seem to multiple the GL by a typical portion size. The dimensions are then [1/m] with SI unit /kg. This seems to detract from the simplicity of the index and makes direct comparisons between different foods difficult. Perhaps the article should explain the background? AHDGraham (talk) 18:36, 29 April 2017 (UTC)AHDGraham

Usage
It would be helpful to understand how Glycemic Load is to be used. For instance, is a food with a Glycemic Load of <10 relatively good?

Bad links
The external link GL Diet Information appears to be broken. Not removing the link, just in case the site is simply down. Josh3580 05:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Curves?
Does anyone know of any links to sites which show the actual curves (blood sugar over time)? It would be helpful to be able to see them.

Geebee2K 19:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Non-carb food stuffs?
The watermelon example of how high water content food can influence the GI value seems like it would be useful to look further into. This is true that one would be getting a lower overall glucose spike from a real portion of watermelon than the GI would lead one to believe (the actual ingestion of carbs per serving is much lower). However, does this direct mathematical adjustment that is applied by the GL rating, of factoring back in the overall portion size, properly compensate for the actual blood glucose effects? It is basically factoring back in a gram quanitity that can be vastly different possible non-carb food stuffs, depending on the food. The non-carb food stuffs contained in various foods can range from being water, fiber, protein, to fat, and all of which may have a different effect on the speed of release of the glucose content. Now, this fact IS already taken into account by the very nature of the GI, but by carrying out the mathematical operation of factoring the portion size back into the equation, are the food's relative effects being properly maintained as a true rule of thumb? In other words, will two identically sized portions of food with the same GL by their nature have the same effect on blood glucose, even if one of these foods is half water, and the other food is half protein or fat? I already know about the disproportionate insulin response relative to the carbohydrate load of some foods, which the insulin index proposes to deal with, so I am not talking about that, but, instead, strictly the blood glucose. Mmortal03 (talk) 06:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Validity of the ranking system....
--124.78.212.48 (talk) 08:51, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=allintitle%3A+glycemic+load+validity&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0


 * http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/31/12/2281.abstract

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 08:54, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/76/1/5

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 09:19, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v61/n1s/abs/1602942a.html

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 09:25, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://assets0.pubget.com/pdf/18175767.pdf

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 09:29, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/88/3/755

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 09:31, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2405890/

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 09:34, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121421592/abstract

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 09:37, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/169/6/667

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 09:40, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122611060/abstract

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 09:48, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/obe.2008.0243?cookieSet=1

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 09:42, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.koreamed.org/SearchBasic.php?DT=1&RID=527244

--124.78.212.48 (talk) 09:44, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/84/3/641

Please be aware that the problem of this should not overwrite the rest researches that are not involved in these methods. People who deleted my writing elsewhere must me mad and I guess those people do not understand science, which has always been advanced through the way of discussing, debating, review and experiment further. Therefore, I suggest wiki admin to employ science degree graduates to manage this website--124.78.214.66 (talk) 11:35, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Talk content removed from main page.
I have removed the section below enclosed in brackets from the main article, and preserve it here on the Talk page. Other text is quote from main article.

For one serving of a food, a GL greater than 20 is considered high, a GL of 11-19 is considered medium, and a GL of 10 or less is considered low. Foods that have a low GL in a typical serving size almost always have a low GI. Foods with an intermediate or high GL in a typical serving size range from a very low to very high GI.

(This sentence is ambiguous and imprecise about the relation between GL and GI, whereas the last sentence of paragraph 1 says they are directly proportional to each other. One of them is wrong. Paragraph 3 supports paragraph 1, but with a different formula (dividing by 100). Furthermore, this paragraph cites no authority for the range of GL for low, medium and high.)

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GL Numbers for "Apples" is Highly Suspect.
The GL Table listing for "Apple" is: GI = 38; Carb grams/100 gram serving = "47" ???; GL = 4 (Nominally correct)

The formula for "GL" being: ( GI x Carb grams ) / 100   would yield a GL of:  ( 38 x 47 ) / 100 = 18  and NOT "4"

The Carb grams in an apple is approximately 14% of the serving size in grams, where 47 grams is nearly *50%* of the 100 gram serving size for the table. There is a large discrepancy here, and elsewhere in the table as well. 71.50.35.187 (talk) 21:09, 28 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I agree that the GL number for apple is in error. The carbohydrate content is 14% and this source confirms 39% as the GI, giving a GL of 5.5. GI sources for apple vary, as this one says 36%, which yields a GL of 5.0. Zefr (talk) 22:59, 28 February 2024 (UTC)