glycemic index, carbs and white rice vs brown rice

Not that I'm necessarily thinking of eating either, but since I was
checking out Japanese soba I also thought I'd compare that to rice, the
main staple here in Japan. Actually white rice is the main staple here;
brown rice is much less used.

According to the USDA charts, I was very surprised to learn that white
rice has LESS calories, LESS carbs and LESS *net* carbs than brown rice
does!

Per 100 gm:

brown rice: 23.5 carbs - 1.8 fiber = 21.7 net carbs and 112 calories
white rice: 21.1 carbs - 1.0 fiber = 20.1 net carbs and 97 calories

The big difference, though this data is not available at the USDA site,
seems to be the glycemic index (GI) value: 55 for brown rice vs 88 for
white rice.

That means that per 100 gm the net GL (glycemic load) value is 11.9 for
brown rice vs 17.7 for white rice.

Just out of curiosity - has anybody tried counting GL as though they
were carbs and limiting themselves to 20 GL units per day?

I guess those units would also be grams of carbs because GL = carbs x GI
and GI is a unitless ratio. Maybe we can call them "glcarbs" to
distinguish them from straight net carbs.

doug

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 17:00:47 GMT, DigitalVinyl wrote:

Doug I'm not sure how much faith I have in the advantage/effect of
GL/GI. When I was on strict low carb (25g/day) I couldn't eat
canteloupe, one of the lowest GI/GL fruits, without putting on water
weight. 3 oz of canteloupe = 1.5lbs gained. I also find it confusing,
since maltodextrin (the white powedery filler in Equal and Splenda)
was given 150GI compared to 100GI for pure sugar. So the filler in
Splenda/Equal is WORSE than sugar?? Cantaloupe is a medium GI (65)
but a very low GL (4). Yet it was too carby for me. Apples were okay,
(GI=40, GL=4). So to me GL was a useless index. I understand the
concept that it is trying to factor in the amount of carbs in a
serving, but it didn't play out well for me.

Are you using the scale where white bread is 100? Maltodextrin has a
higher GI than glucose (blood sugar) by a little bit. It is a very high
GI food. However, in a packet of Splenda, you're talking about less than
a gram.


--
Bob in CT

"Bob M" wrote:

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 17:00:47 GMT, DigitalVinyl wrote:

Doug I'm not sure how much faith I have in the advantage/effect of
GL/GI. When I was on strict low carb (25g/day) I couldn't eat
canteloupe, one of the lowest GI/GL fruits, without putting on water
weight. 3 oz of canteloupe = 1.5lbs gained. I also find it confusing,
since maltodextrin (the white powedery filler in Equal and Splenda)
was given 150GI compared to 100GI for pure sugar. So the filler in
Splenda/Equal is WORSE than sugar?? Cantaloupe is a medium GI (65)
but a very low GL (4). Yet it was too carby for me. Apples were okay,
(GI=40, GL=4). So to me GL was a useless index. I understand the
concept that it is trying to factor in the amount of carbs in a
serving, but it didn't play out well for me.

Are you using the scale where white bread is 100? Maltodextrin has a
higher GI than glucose (blood sugar) by a little bit. It is a very high
GI food. However, in a packet of Splenda, you're talking about less than
a gram.

It is possible, though I recall maltodextrin was in the list of
sugars, along with table sugar, glucose, fructose, honey and the "100"
was in that list. I'm guessing glucose was 100, although I don't
understand how something other than glucose can convert to glucose in
th ebloodstream "faster" than glucose itself. Those numbers came out
of the South Beach book which a friend lent me--I no longer have the
book.

DiGiTAL_ViNYL (no email)
350/267/Dec-264/225
Atkins since Jan 12, 2004
Maint. not counting (CCLL=50-60)