Tag Archives: Low GL (Glycaemic Load)

Lose weight naturally and keep it off with a low GL diet

Posted on 11 March, 2009 by | 2 Comments

Diet Freedom is an organisation founded by two ex serial dieters Tina and Deborah along with registered dietician Nigel Denby, who you may have seen as the nutritional expert on Channel Four’s The Fit Farm series or BBC’s Real Story. Nigel works within NHS hospitals treating patients and also has a private Harley Street clinic, where he uses a low GL (Glycaemic Load) diet to great effect for weight loss, hormonal problems, PCOS, and menopause.

Nigel Denby, health writer and dietitian

Nigel is also a spokesperson for The British Dietetic Association and health writer for The Sunday Telegraph plus many other diet and health magazines. Nigel was very over weight himself which prompted him to train for 5 years as a dietician, he got down to his target weight and stayed there, and has since made it his life’s work to help others with weight issues with great empathy, having got the badge and the tee-shirt himself!

Glycaemic Load versus Glyaemic Index

A low GL diet is the more sophisticated version of the GI (Glycaemic Index) diet. It is based on the GI of foods but goes one step further by taking into account the glycaemic effect of an average portion of food. GI falls down on this as it is a scientific term that can’t be related to an average portion of food which makes it inaccurate and restrictive. The GL reference was devised by Professors at Harvard University (the world’s foremost nutritional research establishment), as they recognised that using the GI alone is only giving half the picture.

By using the GL reference it means that you can eat many more foods previously banned on GI diets, such as watermelon, carrots, parsnips, swede, pumpkin, broad beans and many more as an average portion of these foods has little effect on your blood sugar level.

Read more about GL for weight loss

The Diet Freedom team have written two books to date; The GL Diet published Jan 05; a bestseller and The 7 Day GL Diet newly released in December and published by Harper Collins.

The great thing about the Diet Freedom organisation is that they are totally focused on recommending a low GL diet using healthy natural foods and ingredients.

Win a consultation with Nigel Denby

We have also teamed up with the Diet Freedom team to offer you a chance to win a ‘One to one’ consultation with Nigel Denby Registered Dietician BSc Hons; at his Harley Street clinic (phone consultation can be arranged as an alternative). Please click here to enter.

The Benefits of the low GL Diet

The latest scientific research from around the World shows that following a low GL diet can have the following benefits:

  • Helps you to lose weight
  • Is more effective than a low calorie or low fat diet
  • Improves the body’s sensitivity to insulin
  • Improves diabetes control
  • Keeps you fuller for longer
  • Helps prevent heart disease and some cancers
  • Helps prevent neural tube defects in unborn children

‘Say goodbye GI and hello GL – the new, improved diet for savvy slimmers’ THE TIMES, May 2005

‘Simpler than GI and makes better sense’ EVENING STANDARD, January 2005

Find out more about DietFreedom

You can find out more about Diet Freedom, their online membership service and support forums from their website dietfreedom.co.uk or to buy , their latest book, The GL Diet for Easy Weight Loss, which was featured in The Times on 3rd Dec 2005.

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Glycaemic Index and Glycaemic Load –a ladybird explanation

Posted on 11 March, 2009 by | 2 Comments

What is GI and how is it worked out?

To find out the GI (Glyceamic Index) of a food scientists feed volunteers enough of one specific food to give 50g of carbs. For example, if testing bread this would equal two large slices, if testing watermelon, a whole watermelon, or if testing carrots 700 g. They then take blood samples afterwards to see how much each food raises the level of sugar in the blood. GI or Glycaemic Index is the result and is numbered 1 – 100 (low GI equals 55 or less, medium GI 56 – 69 and high GI 70 plus)

So the GI is a good way, in the science laboratory, to compare the effects of different carbs (i.e. bread carb – v – watermelon carb) but, where it falls down is that it doesn’t tell us how much the level of sugar in our blood will rise after we eat a ‘normal’ portion of the food in question. Two large slices of bread are feasible as a portion but how often have you eaten a whole watermelon or 700g of carrots at one sitting?! Unless you’re a donkey of course!

Enter GL!

GL or Glycaemic Load is a simple calculation based on the GI test result, but importantly, it also takes into account the amount of carbs contained in an average food portion. This gives us a relevant reference that can be directly related to the actual amount of food we eat, which is crucial. For example the GI of watermelon is 72, (a whole one would have been used in tests) so it is classed as a high GI food (anything with a GI over 70 is high) BUT the GL of a ‘portion’ of watermelon, i.e. a large slice (120g) contains very few carbs and so when you calculate the GL it has a very low score of 4, (a GL score of 10 or less is low).

This means that a normal ‘portion’ of watermelon will have little or no effect on the level of sugar in your blood – so you should eat and enjoy and not avoid as it is ‘high GI’.

Professors from Harvard University (the most prestigious and longest established nutritional research establishment in the world) came up with the GL calculation as they felt that using GI alone as a food reference doesn’t give a true picture, and we couldn’t agree more!

Most authors of GI books are now starting to talk about GL, although The GL Diet and The 7 Day GL Diet were the first to be published.

So you can forget GI

The only reference you need to think about is GL Low GL = 10 or less Medium GL = 11 – 19 High GL = 20 plus Most people have a high GL or Glycaemic Load of over 120 per day from what they eat. Aim for a lower GL of around 80 per day as a good target. A comprehensive food list with GL scores can be found in dietician, Nigel Denby’s latest book The 7 Day GL Diet or on the diet freedom website.

Diet Freedom © DietFreedom 2005

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Adam & Eve Pudding

Posted on 11 February, 2009 by | 3 Comments

 

Ready in 30 minutes

No added sugar

Gluten and wheat free

Low GI and GL

Serves 2

  • 1 large cooking apple, peeled, cored and sliced or two green apples *also works well with firm pears
  • 2 tbsp olive oil  
  • 2 medium free range eggs 
  • 100g ground almonds 
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp gluten free baking powder 
  • 4 tbsp Sweet Freedom
  • crème fraîche to serve 

 

  1. Preheat oven to 180°C / 350°F / Gas mark 4. 
  2. Grease and line the bottom of a 9 inch oven proof cake tin with greaseproof paper.
  3. In a large bowl whisk the eggs for a few minutes until really fluffy and pale. 
  4. Lightly whisk in 3 tbsp of Sweet Freedom and the oil. 
  5. Whisk in the ground almonds, cinnamon and baking powder. 
  6. Arrange the apples over the bottom of the cake tin, drizzle with 1 tbsp of the sweetener then top with the almond sponge mix. 
  7. Bake for approx 30 minutes until springy on top.
  8. Turn out, slice and top with a spoon of crème fraîche. 

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Chocolate Orange Truffles

Posted on 11 February, 2009 by | Leave a comment
  • No added sugar
  • Gluten and wheat free
  • Low GI and GL

Ready in 2 hours including chilling time

Makes 6 – 8 truffles

  • 40g ground almonds or cashews
  • 40g smooth unsalted peanut butter
  • 3 tbsp Sweet Freedom 
  • 40g Willie’s Venezuelan Black (100% Pure Cacao), melted or the darkest chocolate you can find which will have a small amount of sugar in.
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • zest of 1 orange
  • 2 tbsp cocoa powder for dusting

 

  1. Place all ingredients except the cocoa powder in a food processor and pulse until smooth
  2. Roll into 3/4 inch balls
  3. Sprinkle the cocoa powder onto a plate and roll each truffle to coat
  4. Chill in fridge for two hours prior to serving

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Glycaemic Load (GL) is more effective than low fat / low calorie

Posted on 4 November, 2008 by | 2 Comments

Overweight people lost more weight on low GL (glycaemic load) diets than on high GL or other weight reduction diets and their cardiovascular risk marker profile improved according to a review in July 2007 carried out by the highly respected and independent Cochrane Collaboration.

About GL and the benefits

The Glycaemic Index (GI) is a test done in a laboratory with human volunteers involving blood tests to see how different foods affect our blood sugar level.

What is GL?

An equation based on the GI that also takes into account the amount of carbohydrates in each portion.

Why is GL better than GI?

It’s a more accurate indicator of fat storage as it takes into account portion sizes and carbohydrate content so that you can balance your blood sugar level more easily.

Why is balancing your blood sugar level important?

Eating a low GL diet helps keep your blood sugar level stable and is the key to weight loss, long term health and prevention / management of diabetes.

Choosing low GL foods that don’t produce more glucose (energy) than you need results in weight loss because excess glucose is stored as fat.

Proven health benefits of following a low GL diet:

  • Helps you lose weight
  • Increases body’s sensitivity to insulin
  • Improves diabetes control
  • Reduces risk of heart disease
  • Reduces blood cholesterol levels
  • Helps to manage the symptoms of PCOS (Poly cystic ovary syndrome)
  • Reduces hunger and keeps you fuller for longer
  • Prolongs physical endurance
  • Helps re-fuel carbohydrate stores after exercise
  • Helps prevent diabetes
  • Improves diabetes control
  • Helps prevent some forms of cancer
  • Helps protect eye sight
  • Improves acne

If you would like to read more in depth research about the health and weight loss benefits of eating a low GL diet see the Diet Freedom GL Research page. As a member you have access to a huge and constantly updated searchable database of health, advice and research.

With the help of Diet Freedom the online health and diet service, we have listed some of the many low GL foods that we have in stock. Diet Freedom combines EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) to address comfort and emotional eating with a low GL diet for sustainable weight loss to great effect.

To gain a special 20% membership discount of Diet Freedom, just enter the code GDNL when you sign up. See some of their testimonials.

What the experts say

The GL was devised in 2001 by the highly respected Professor Walter Willett, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School as an improvement over GI. Harvard is renowned for nutritional research having carried out the longest running nutritional studies in the world.

Although the GI of a food is helpful information, it is only part of the story, because the effect of eating a food on blood glucose and insulin levels depends on both the amount of carbohydrate and the GI of that carbohydrate. For this reason the concept of the ‘Glycaemic Load’ or GL has been developed. This is the amount of carbohydrate in a food multiplied by the Glycaemic Index of that carbohydrate. The GL better reflects a food’s effect on your body’s biochemistry than either the amount of carbohydrate or the GI alone.

Professor Walter Willett, Harvard Medical School

The increasing prevalence of diabetes has huge social and financial implications for developed countries. With increasing incidence of conditions such as the metabolic syndrome, predisposing people to diabetes, the trend is even more worrying. I am convinced that making diet and lifestyle changes to reduce the risk or improve the treatment of diabetes is one of the most critical steps and individual can take. The GL diet combines the fundamental principles of a healthy balanced diet with practical advice to help improve glycaemic control and long-term health.

Sir Michael Hirst, Trustee & Former Chairman, Diabetes UK

Rather than being just a fad diet, GL represents a sustainable lifestyle choice, which is healthy and satisfying in the long term. The science is well founded, and has been talked about in academic circles for years, but now, as we are becoming expert nutritionists, we should all be more aware and conscious of GL as part of a healthy balanced lifestyle.

Dr David Haslam, Clinical director of the National Obesity Forum

Lesley Cutts © Dietfreedom.co.uk

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GI and Vinegar

Posted on 28 November, 2005 by | 1 Comment

Most of you know I’m pro the GL regime as a sensible way to maintain and control weight, but get a load of this….

Swedish scientists have found that adding normal malt vinegar to a meal of white bread ( a high GL item) slows down the rate at which it causes blood glucose and insulin to increase.

People in the trial who ate the meal containing vinegar also said that they felt more full the more vinegar they added, so if your having a high GI meal, like chips, then slap on the vinegar!!

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A little bit of what you fancy…

Posted on 29 June, 2005 by | 2 Comments

I’m always interested in the great debate about chocolate, should I or shouldn’t I?

Its been Jemma’s birthday in the office and she has chocolates so this question is very poignant for me right at this moment! I’ve been thinking GI and GL for my own benefit as much as anyone’s as I could do with losing a little weight, but I’ve just been handed a few squares of dark chocolate, and now I’m eating them thinking about how good these flavonoids are for me.

Honestly I’m not making this up! Small daily doses of flavonoid-rich dark chocolate eaten over a two-week period is thought to benefit blood vessels by helping them to dilate better.

Here’s the story – Scientists testing this out focused on epicatechin, a specific flavonoid that was absorbed at high levels in the blood, and found it to be particularly beneficial in blood vessel functions. Elevated levels of epicatechin trigger the release of active substances that increase blood flow through arteries and improve heart health. Chocolate has been shown in previous studies to improve the inner lining of blood vessels after just a single serving or several servings over a few days.

Dark chocolate has a lot of flavonoids, chemical compounds with antioxidant properties found in a variety of plants, which have been shown to have a number of cardiovascular benefits, including decreasing bad LDL cholesterol and inhibiting the aggregation of blood platelets that contribute to blood clots that produce heart attacks and strokes – get that!

The scientists mentioned above carried out a double-blind study in which 11 of 21 patients received 1.6 ounces of flavonoid-rich chocolate every day for two weeks. The rest ate chocolate with low flavonoid content. At the end of the trial, those who had eaten flavonoid-rich chocolate had a better reading of flow-mediated dilation, a marker for determining heart disease risks, than those who didn’t. Researchers also determined that concentrations of the cocoa flavonoid epicatechin rose significantly in blood samples taken from those who received the high flavanoid chocolate. Interestingly, the blood cholesterol levels in study participants didn’t increase in either group.

Dark chocolate has been found to have more flavonoids than any food tested so far, including blueberries, red wine and black and green teas.

The study also suggested that eating chocolate with at least a 70 percent cocoa content, in moderation, can be beneficial in conjunction with exercise and a healthy diet. So don’t overdo it, I promise I won’t. All eaten now, so back to my GL plan for lunch.

Dr Mercola will back me up too, and he was perhaps more skeptical than me to begin with.

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Glycemic Load v Glycemic Index

Posted on 28 June, 2005 by | Leave a comment

Reading a little more widely on the GI issues, research etc I have come across a new angle to the debate. Glycemic Load versus Glycemic Index.

The Glycemic Index tells us how quickly the sugar in the food raises the sugar in our blood, but just how much of that sugar there is doesn’t come into it. We just have to know that if a product is high in its GI then we should eat in moderation, but that is rather vague as a guide for a lifestyle change. As Patrick Holford has pointed out, the GI of a piece of chocolate is the same as 100 bars of chocolate. Mmm this sounds like my kind of diet?

Since beginning my research on the GI issue I have been put off melon because of its high Glycemic Index of 72 while a Mars Bar is around 68. Of coarse this is because the watermelon contains fast-releasing sugar, but very little of it, whilst the Mars Bar contains slower releasing sugar but loads of it.

So this GI scheme could get confusing and it looks to me like we need to redefine the indicators a little to take sugar quantities into account before we get too immersed in the GI indicators and put them on all our packaging. Using the Glycemic Load (GL) certainly looks like a more balanced indicator, where the GI is multiplied by the quantity of sugar in a food serving. This is what we should be using on our food labels.

More about Glycemic Load (GL)

What is Glycemic Load?

By using the GI and multiplying by the quantity of sugar in a serving (GI (%) x grams of carbohydrate per serving) we get the total glycemic response to a food or meal which is a very good indicator of the overall affect on our bodies.

One unit of GL ~ glycemic effect of 1 gram glucose

In this way we can count GL in a similar way to the counting calories principle. A typical diet would have around 100 GL units per day (ie. 60-180)

Here is a good guide from the university of Sydney who remain, in my eyes anyway, the authority on GI issues.

Low GI = 55 or less Medium GI = 56 – 69 High GI = 70 or more
Low GL = 10 or less Medium GL = 11- 19 High GL = 20 or more

Per day: Low GL is less than 80 High GL is more than 120

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