Glycemic Index of Sweeteners

Following an ultra low carb diet like a ketogenic diet involves choosing the right nutrition sources and following a very disciplined consumption routine. You don’t want to waste all these efforts just by choosing the wrong sweetener for your drink or dish.

When you are following an extreme nutrition plan like the keto diet, it is not enough to know only the carb content of the food you are consuming. You need to understand the type of carbs and other substances present.

Not all carbs are similar. Each type of carb has a different effect on your body. You can’t eat everything carb-free and consume 50 grams of sugar at the end of the day even if it falls within your daily carb consumption limit.

The glycemic index of the food items provides a better indication of that item being a low carb diet-friendly or not. In principle, it indicates how quickly the food can raise the blood sugar level.

A rapid rise in blood sugar levels causes a sugar rush, insulin response, and may push you out of ketosis.

Thus, while being on the keto diet, it is important to know the glycemic index of the food items you are consuming. Especially, sweeteners, as these are most likely to cause a rapid spike in blood sugar levels.

Let’s learn more about the commonly available sweeteners and their suitability to ketogenic diets based on the glycemic index.

Glycemic Index of Sweeteners 

For avoiding the health problems like diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and insulin instance that would be much more disastrous than just kicking you out of ketosis, you need to maintain an even blood sugar level.

Certain sweeteners can spike the blood sugar that wouldn’t be desirable for anyone, on a diet or otherwise. The glycemic index of food items including the sweeteners is an indicator of the amount of carbs, type, and presence of elements other than carbs.

Sweeteners that have high carb content and no other elements have a higher glycemic index. The elements other than carbs cannot spike the blood sugar level thus don’t contribute to the GI. So, low GI means the food item is good for you on a low carb diet.

To determine the GI of any food item the glucose is used as the standard. The GI for glucose is considered 100 and other items are compared with it. The portion of the sweetener containing 50 grams of carbs is compared with 50 grams of glucose to find the GI by comparison.

Here we have gathered the glycemic index for all the popular sweeteners. This list can come in handy if you are following a ketogenic diet for choosing the low GI sweeteners.

As you can deduce from the table above, the different types of sweeteners differ by a large extent in terms of the glycemic index. While GI cannot be a sole indicator for healthy food choice but it is a better one than many others.

Sugar and sugar extracts have a higher glycemic index. Fructose which is present in ordinary white sugar has comparatively low GI but it has adverse effects on your health. The white sugar or sucrose has GI 65 which is a result of the ingredients glucose and fructose.

It is evident from the above data that if you wish to keep following the low carb diet and still satisfy the sweet tooth you need to switch to a sugar alcohol, natural sweeteners like stevia, or artificial sweeteners like aspartame.

What sweeteners are low glycemic? 

These zero-carb sweeteners provide a sweet taste experience without raising the blood sugar level.

Stevia is one of the most popular natural low glycemic sweeteners used in keto-friendly food products. Acesulfame K, aspartame, and sucralose are popular artificial sweeteners used to sweeten dishes and drinks. Saccharin is more popular in local drink brands.

All these sweeteners have zero glycemic indexes and are so much sweeter than regular sugar that you have to use a very tiny amount per serving. So, to ease handling of these low glycemic sweeteners sugar alcohols like erythritol are used to add volume.

Here is the list of the most popular lowest GI sweeteners.

• Stevia
• Thaumatin
• Acesulfame K
• Aspartame
• Saccharin
• Sucralose
• Erythritol

Benefits of Low GI Sweeteners

The low glycemic index sweeteners help you keep even blood sugar levels. This might not seem like a great outcome at first glance, but it has many health benefits. Here are few benefits of using low GI sweeteners;

• Reduces the risk of a sugar spike
• Lowers heart disease risk
• Helps to manage diabetes without giving up on sweets
• Helps in keeping the ketosis going
• Helps to keep the blood cholesterol level in limits
• Improves insulin sensitivity

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Application of Glycemic Index In Planning The Diet

The glycemic index for a food element defines how quickly the carbs in that food item can cause the blood sugar spike. That information alone may not be sufficient for food selection and portion size definition for a particular diet.

Hence a more useful derivative of glycemic index that considers carbs content per serving, like glycemic load can be effectively used for rating the food products.

Glycemic Load

Glycemic load is a product of GI and carbs per serving. So, if the sweetener or any food element has a low GI and low amount of carbs per serving, then it would have low GL. The glycemic load for a food element can be calculated by multiplying the amount of carbs per serving in grams with its GI and dividing the product by hundred. A food item with GL below 10 is considered keto-friendly.

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Conclusion

The glycemic index for food items like veggies and meat may not be that important as they are already low in carbs, but for sweeteners, it is the most important indicator of their keto-friendly nature. The sweeteners are mostly carbs, thus choosing the ones with the lowest GI should be your aim if you are on the keto diet.

References

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2584181/
• https://glycemicindex.com/gi-search/
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/inulin
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7103435/
• https://dtc.ucsf.edu/pdfs/Sweeteners_04.30.10.pdf
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5817209/