Look What's On My Low Glycemic Food List!
A personal low glycemic food list can be really helpful if you are a diabetic. It helps you make more quantifiable, rather than qualitative, decisions about what to eat.
GI and GL Values
| Description | GI Range | GL Range |
| Low | Up to 55 | Up to 10 |
| Medium | 56 - 69 | 11 - 19 |
| High | 70 and over | 20 and over |
This is how the Glycemic Index site describes the values.
Check out these topics related to diabetic diets:
- American diabetes diet
- Anti-diabetes diet
- Best diabetes diet
- Diet recommendations
- Diabetic meal plan
- Diabetic vegetarian diet
- Glycemic index list
- Healing foods pyramid
- Healthy eating pyramid
- Low glycemic food
- Meal planning
- New food pyramid
- No-carb food
- Vegetarian diets
- Vegetarian food
- Weight control diet
- Whole food market
So for example, cherries, which are some of my favorite fruits, has a GI of 22 and a GL of 2.7, having a 120-g serving is really great help in selecting healthy foods.
Here is my low glycemic food list with some of my favorite foods. I could not find values for all the items I would like to include, but some are in the table below.
Even from this short list it is already clear how difficult it is to completely avoid all high and medium glycemic index values. I love potatoes.
You low glycemic food list should therefore be a resource to help you make more intelligent selection of food items as you prepare a well balanced diet.
Again, I raise the question posed earlier in my other article: What is the net effect of selecting combinations of items on my low glycemic food listing? If I eat peanuts with my potatoes, does that help my blood glucose management?
| Food | Serving Size | Glycemic Index | Glycemic Load |
| Cherries | 120 g | 22 | 3 |
| Papaya | 120 g | 60 | 5 |
| Apple | 120 g | 40 | 6 |
| Orange | 120 g | 40 | 4 |
| Grapefruit | 120 g | 25 | 3 |
| Peach | 120 g | 28 | 2 |
| Strawberries | 120 g | 40 | 1 |
| Cashew nuts | 50 g | 25 | 3 |
| Peanuts | 50 g | 13 | <1 |
| Peanut butter | 80 g | 22 | 2 |
| Soy beans | 150 g | 15 | <1 |
| Soy milk (typical) | 250 ml | 45 | 4.5 |
| Kidney beans | 150 g | 23 | 6 |
| Potatoes | 150 g | 24 to 76 | 5 to 15 |
| Brown rice | 150 g | 50 | 24 |
| Lentils | 150 g | 22 | 3 |
| Green peas | 80 g | 51 | 3 |
| Sweet corn | 80 g | 60 | 10 |
| Whole wheat bread | 30 g | 73 | 10 |
| Carrots | 80 g | 95 | 5 |
And again, how do you accurately gage complex combinations such as pizzas and soups?
Note that, it is important to take the serving size of foods on your low glycemic food list into consideration. Why? Because the GL values will be different depending on the size of the serving.
You can read another article to see how the importance of the GL values and how they are calculated.