The Glycemic load

So, a high GI food such as watermelon has a low GL, this is because there’s not much carbohydrate in there, it’s mainly water. If consumed in small quantities it would have the same effect on blood sugar – which is a very modest release of blood sugar – as eating larger quantities of a low GI food such as berries. However, a standard portion of rice is usually more than 50g and as it is both medium on the GI and GL scales it would deliver a larger amount of sugar in to the blood stream raising insulin considerably. From the GL ranking system you can start to get a feel for which types of carbohydrates can potentially make you fat and which are essentially healthy and should be consumed freely.