Fast Carbs spikes blood Glucose and drives Hunger

We are eating more carbs and more refined carbs, and that’s a big problem.

Weight gain is often considered a problem with ‘overeating’. So why do we overeat? Not because we choose to, but because we’re hungry. Therefore, if we consider the problem at a deeper level, we must control hunger and satiety, not calories, because it is hunger that drives eating behavior. Satiety measures how full we feel after eating, where hunger is what drives our desire to eat. Why are we hungry? There are many factors, but how quickly we absorb food and glucose changes our hormonal profile and determines how hungry we are.

Glycemic Index (GI) is a measure of how quickly blood glucose spikes after a specific amount of carbohydrate. Certain foods, mostly refined carbohydrates increase blood glucose quickly compared to unrefined carbohydrates and therefore have a higher GI. The total amount of carbs is the same, but the higher GI means a higher spike in glucose and insulin. This drops faster, often causing glucose to go lower than normal. The Glycemic Load (GL) is a related measurement to the GI, adjusting for the carbohydrate content of foods.