Last week a very large weight loss maintenance study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This study spanned 8 countries and enrolled 938 people. I’ll write more about the study in the near future but I wanted to mention it today as the main conclusion of the study was that the people who ate a low glycemic diet were able to keep the weight off better than the people that ate a higher glycemic diet.
For today I wanted to highlight two excerpts from a editorial by David Ludwig MD, PhD, in the New England Journal of Medicine inspired by this study as he clearly defines two common questions about the glycemic index:
What is the glycemic index?
The glycemic index describes the way in which foods affect blood glucose levels in the post-prandial period [i.e. the time period directly following a meal]
What are high glycemic foods and what are low glycemic foods?
Most highly processed grain products have a high glycemic index , whereas minimally processed grains, whole fruits, legumes, and nonstarchy vegetables tend to have a moderate or low glycemic index.
