Dear all,
Ive been a low carber for a while and have had great success with this. Ive slipped off the band wagon of late and am looking to tighten things up. When I eat roast meat, I usually have pumpkin with it due it having around 7g/100g of carbs. But I recently read that sweet-potato has a lower GI than pumpkin (and thus impact on insulin levels) but it has a higher carb level (8g/100g). Why is this? Cheers and thanks, Brendan

The glycemic index compares foods with the same number of carbs. So if comparing sweet potato with pumpkin, they wouldn't use 1/2 cup of sweet potato and 1/2 cup of pumpkin, they would use enough sweet potato to yield 10 grams of carb and enough pumpkin to yield 10 gm of carb. That levels the playing field a bit.

If you're comparing eating 1/2 cup of sweet potato with eating 1/2 cup of pumpkin, the pumpkin is the better choice.

I hope that made sense.

I just looked in the USDA nutrient database and for 100 gms of raw pumpkin and 100 gms of raw sweet potato the figures are quite different from what you've listed.

100 gm raw sweet potato: 20 gms carb
100 gm raw pumpkin: 6 gm carb

Just to chime in here. There is a lot of controversy over this whole GI business. Barry Groves explains it better than me, but, basically, the GI of a food changes according to what you eat it with, as far as I understand it.

I would forget about the GI business and just go by the carbs. It will certainly make life simpler!!!

amanda

Yeah, a fructose is low GI but evil, evil stuff. GI index is trash, IMHO.

Dear Bike2work, Amandawood, and nancyLC, many thanks for your help with this!

More relevant than the GI is the GL, aka glycemic load.
Carrots have an high GI but a low GL and their impact of blood sugar when eating raw is minimal. Pumpkin might have an higher GI but if it has a low GL that's wht matters.