adding the glycemic index of foods to Cronometer Gold?

Dragon8

Hello Would it be possible to add the glycemic index of foods to Cronometer Gold, please?

Chris_C

Great idea - Gylcemic Load as well please

Arthur64

Hi. This has been a feature request dating back to 2017, many people have requested this. Given that you have the data on grams of specific foods, it seems like it would be very straightforward to link a database of glycemic index for different foods to their quantities in the diaries and calculate the glycemic load. Sounds like something a student intern could kick off in the summer and target for release sometime thereafter.

Chris_C

100% agree - please can this be expedited 🙏

CalorieGuru

I wouldn't waste time implementing GI on a system where you can't even search for the last time you had a hamburger.

There's no way to know the GI of any food unless you eat exactly 50g of carbs and don't mix it with anything, and even then there's probably a 20% variance between whatever they tested to get the index and whatever you're eating. It's useless except as a guide of foods to avoid if you're trying to burn fat.

How many french fries can you eat before it spikes your blood suger? Nobody knows. I knew a basket of fries was fattening long before there was a GI.

Arthur64

Hello Cal Guru

There is a difference between the Glycemic Index and the Glycemic Load. The index for a food is the same for all quantities. The load is what you get after multiplying the index by the grams of carbs and divide by 100. All else equal, 20 french fries has twice the load as 10 French fries, even though the index is the same for each. The index is what you will find in a database. The load depends on how much food a given person eats.

You can search prior foods as follows. Using the export feature, export a list of all your foods for the time period you select. The list can be imported into excel. It is a very detailed inventory of the proteins, fats, carbs, and other nutrients of each food item you log, and includes the total amount of food, and many other items, including total carbs and net carbs. Then you can find out how many hamburgers and fries you ate last week. It beats going through the food log for each day.

From here, you can classify foods into groups and assign a glycemic index to each one. Once you know the index and the amount of net carbs, you can calculate the glycemic load of each. Adding together by meals or days you can then find out your glycemic load, which is the amount of glucose you are delivering to your body.

I’ve done this for a day, by using an estimated average index over all foods I ate that day. It was 41. I multiplied it by the net carbs for that day to find my load. I actually made two calcs, one for 40 and one for 50, to get a sense of the range.

The estimate could be improved if the GI were listed with each food item logged, as there are databases with this information available. Granted, the index for many packaged foods will not be available, however estimates of them can be made. This is why I believe it is feasible for Cronometer to include the Glycemic Index along with the other nutrition items they list for each food. I also agree that there are many other factors that make it difficult to get “the number” for a given food.

Here is why knowing the load matters. By monitoring my blood sugar level after meals, I saw that I was within normal range after eating when my total calories for a meal stayed at or below 350 kcal. But if I had a meal of 450 kcal, then I exceeded normal levels.

Cronometer allows me to determine my total calories and the mix of proteins, carbs and fats BEFORE I eat the meal, so if it’s too many total calories or too few carbs, I can adjust my meal before hand.

In this way, I can manage my diet even to the point of knowing the approximate glycemic load for each meal.

It may sound like a lot of effort. But I found that it takes just 5 or 10 minutes when preparing my meal to weigh each item on a scale and log them into cronometer. I’ve used other apps where you log your food but I’ve not yet found one with as much info available to the user, or have as many foods in its database.

Hope you found this worth reading,

Arthur

CalorieGuru

I know EXACTLY what they are. The GI indexes are generally wrong; it's garbage in, garbage out. If 2 labs measure exactly the same food they NEVER get the same number. Never.

"Load" tries to explain why eating a carrot doesnt make you fat. It's gibberish. It's hard enough for the average person to understand calories.

I'll say it again. Glycemic index is good for categorizing foods as "Good Food, Bad Food". Nothing more.

Thanks for informing me how I can implement a basic feature by exporting the data into a spreadsheet, like its 1992 or something. I'd use a database because I'm more advanced than you. You should be pushing them to implement features that make daily use of the product less cumbersome; not boutique features like GI

Arthur64

Glycemic load shows how much glucose is being ingested, not fat. Right? It only gets converted to fat later on if the body can’t use it right away. Thanks for your reply.

Chris_C

Agree 100% with Arthur’s comment 😎

Arthur64

Thanks Chris. I made a note in the Requested Features section of the forum that they should check out this section as well..

Chris_C

Great - thanks Arthur.
Hopefully one day we will get there