Discover the glycemic index of common foods and find smart, lower-GI alternatives. Make informed choices for better blood sugar management.
Slow, steady blood sugar rise. Best for blood sugar control.
Moderate blood sugar impact. Consume in moderation.
Rapid blood sugar spike. Limit or pair with protein/fat.
Glycemic Load (GL) accounts for serving size. A high-GI food in small portions may have low GL.
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Click on any food to see detailed GI information and lower-GI alternatives.
Glycemic Index (GI) measures how quickly a food raises blood sugar on a scale of 0-100. Glycemic Load (GL) accounts for serving size, giving a more realistic picture of blood sugar impact.
Low-GI diets can help manage diabetes, reduce heart disease risk, maintain healthy weight, and provide sustained energy. High-GI foods cause rapid spikes and crashes.
This tool lists 62 foods with three numbers each: the glycemic index, the glycemic load, and the carbohydrate and fibre the serving carries. Those three numbers are not independent. The load is derived from the index and the serving, which means a food can look alarming on one line and ordinary on the next. This section shows the arithmetic the calculator performs, and the published values it starts from.
A glycemic index value is relative: it describes a food’s effect on blood glucose compared with a reference food given in the same amount of available carbohydrate. Two reference foods are in common use, glucose and white bread, and the international tables convert between them with a factor of 100/70 or 70/100. The table authors recommend reporting on the glucose scale, so every index on this page and in the calculator is a glucose-scale value. If you are reading a source that uses white bread as 100, multiply its number by 0.7 to compare it with ours.
The bands are conventions, not thresholds handed down by a regulator. The international tables describe low-glycemic foods as 55 or less on the glucose scale and high-glycemic foods as 70 or greater, which leaves 56 to 69 in the middle. The calculator applies the same cut-offs to the load, with 10 or less counted as low and 20 or more as high.
| Band | Glycemic index (glucose = 100) | Glycemic load | What it describes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 55 or less | 10 or less | Slow glucose release for the amount eaten |
| Medium | 56 to 69 | 11 to 19 | Between the two extremes |
| High | 70 or greater | 20 or more | Fast glucose release for the amount eaten |
These are averages drawn from multiple studies by different laboratories, published in the international tables of glycemic index and glycemic load values, with the standard error of the mean beside each one. Read the spread as well as the average: chickpeas sit at 28 with a margin of nine, which is wider than the gap between several foods in the table. The band column is ours, applied to the published average.
| Food | Glycemic index | Standard error | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| White wheat bread | 75 | 2 | High |
| Wholemeal bread | 74 | 2 | High |
| White rice, boiled | 73 | 4 | High |
| Brown rice, boiled | 68 | 4 | Medium |
| Barley | 28 | 2 | Low |
| Spaghetti, white | 49 | 2 | Low |
| Couscous | 65 | 4 | Medium |
| Potato, boiled | 78 | 4 | High |
| Potato, instant mash | 87 | 3 | High |
| Sweet potato, boiled | 63 | 6 | Medium |
| Carrots, boiled | 39 | 4 | Low |
| Apple, raw | 36 | 2 | Low |
| Banana, raw | 51 | 3 | Low |
| Watermelon, raw | 76 | 4 | High |
| Milk, full fat | 39 | 3 | Low |
| Chickpeas | 28 | 9 | Low |
| Lentils | 32 | 5 | Low |
| Rice milk | 86 | 7 | High |
| Cornflakes | 81 | 6 | High |
| Porridge, rolled oats | 55 | 2 | Low |
The glycemic load multiplies the index by the grams of available carbohydrate in the serving and divides by 100. Available carbohydrate means total carbohydrate minus fibre, which is the definition used when the tables were compiled. The calculator does exactly that arithmetic on its own rows, so the load it shows can always be reproduced from the index, carbohydrate and fibre beside it.
| Food (serving) | Index | Carbohydrate | Fibre | Available carbohydrate | Load |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White rice, 1 cup cooked | 73 | 45 g | 0.6 g | 44.4 g | 32 |
| Baked potato, 1 medium | 85 | 37 g | 4 g | 33 g | 28 |
| White pasta, 1 cup cooked | 49 | 43 g | 2.5 g | 40.5 g | 20 |
| Cola, 12 oz | 63 | 39 g | 0 g | 39 g | 25 |
| Watermelon, 1 cup | 76 | 11 g | 0.6 g | 10.4 g | 8 |
| Lentils, 1/2 cup cooked | 32 | 20 g | 8 g | 12 g | 4 |
Watermelon and cola are the pair that makes the point. Watermelon has the higher index of the two, but a cup of it carries so little carbohydrate that the load lands at 8. Cola has a lower index, and 39 g of carbohydrate in the can takes it to 25, above the low band despite the milder index. Ranking by index alone would prefer the cola; ranking by load does not. When a meal needs both a low index and a low load, the nutrition calculator puts the carbohydrate total beside it, and the dietary meal finder handles the low-carb and keto tags if the goal is the load rather than the index.
The authors of the international tables are direct about the limits. Many foods have been tested only once, in ten or fewer subjects, and values for some products are drifting upward as manufacturing favours faster cooking. Porridge oats vary enough that a single number can mislead. The same paper notes that the World Health Organization, the American Diabetes Association, Diabetes UK and the Canadian Diabetes Association give qualified support for the concept while many clinicians still consider glycemic index and load too variable for everyday use, and it states plainly that the index should not be used in isolation from energy density and macronutrient profile. A revised edition of the tables was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2021, which is where the current values for most foods now come from.
Sources: Atkinson, Foster-Powell and Brand-Miller, “International Tables of Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load Values: 2008”, Diabetes Care 31(12):2281–2283; Atkinson et al., “International tables of glycemic index and glycemic load values 2021: a systematic review”, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.