Low Glycemic Recipes: Easy to Prepare

Did you know that learning how to make low glycemic recipes can be fun? At the same time, they are healthy for you … and you end up becoming a good chef!

The term “Low Glycemic Recipes” refers to foods you can create using ingredients that have a low glycemic index. The glycemic index scale is a scale from 0 up to 100 for carbohydrate foods. The higher the rating of a food on the scale, the higher the resulting blood sugar is from eating the food. High glycemic index foods are rated 69 and above on this scale.

On the other hand, Low glycemic index foods are rated 0 to 55. When you include foods such as these in the recipes you are cooking, the overall food ends up with a low glycemic index.

Glycemic Index Values of Some Different Fruits

For example, let’s say you would like to make a fruit salad. Here’s a short list of some of the Glycemic indices for different fruits:

Apple 38	Raisins 64	Watermelon 72
Pear 38	Orange 42	Banana 51
Grapefruit 25	Peach 42	Prunes 29
Apricot 57	Cantaloupe 65	Cherries 22
Dates 103	Grapes 49	Mangos 51
Pineapple 66	Strawberries 40	Plums 53

Now looking at this list, let’s eliminate any of the fruits that are not in the low glycemic index group of foods. This is any food with a higher value than 55. Our list would eliminate raisins, watermelon, apricots, cantaloupe, dates, and pineapple.

Now once in awhile there are exceptions to a rule, and actually watermelon and cantaloupe are the exceptions because they contain such a high percentage of water. This throws off the glycemic index value. These two foods should be considered low glycemic index foods.

Step-by-Step How to Create Low Glycemic Recipes

Now let’s create a recipe for fruit salad using our favorite fruits from the list. Let’s dice up one apple, add a cup of strawberries, dice up one pear, and add ½ cup pitted cherries. We’ll make it an off white/red salad. In case you are wondering how these quantities were decided on, they were based on flavor. An apple is kind of bland, as is a pea. Strawberries are mildly sweet depending on their ripeness. Cherries are sweet. Every bland fruit was matched to a sweet fruit.

Let’s add a handful of shredded, unsweetened coconut to the mixture. Coconut is considered a fat so it has a Glycemic Index of 0 unless it has carbohydrates in it.

After mixing the ingredients, simply cover and refrigerate it. The flavors will blend together nicely in a few hours. Then serve one-half cup as a normal serving size.

As you can see, creating Low Glycemic recipes is all an exercise in imagination. It’s about wondering what foods might taste good together and then experimenting a little. The truth is that you can become a Low Glycemic recipes chef in very little time! Just get started today!

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