The Glycemic Index Diet and Cookbook: Recipes to Chart Glycemic Load and Lose Weight Paperback – January 2, 2014

If you’ve ever looked at a nutrition label, you might’ve noticed how sugar is in everything. It’s seemingly impossible to avoid loading our bodies up with too much sugar to the detriment of our health. This book is a great guide for people who want to know about “glycemic index” and blood glucose levels and the affects on their health. Biological basics are explained in plain language to educate readers on how foods are broken down into sugars, how our bodies use it, and the health threats of a diet that contains too much sugar.One of the most helpful aspects of this book is the chapter on Glycemic Load Tables. The chart of breads, beverages, fruits, vegetables, proteins, cereals and grains helps readers to consider how many grams of glucose are in different foods, thereby giving us the tools to make wiser choices. There is also information on which foods to select at the grocery store, and which ones to avoid. To help jump start your new healthful eating habits, there is a 14 day meal plan to eliminate any worries!The best part, and the bulk of the book, is devoted to a myriad of recipes. Everything from breakfast, snacks, appetizers, lunch, salads, dinners, side dishes and desserts is included to give you the tools to be successful. Here are a few of my favorites: Artichoke-stuffed chicken breasts with goat cheese, hoisin pork and veggie stir fry, ham and brie sandwiches with apple, beef and porcini mushroom soup, banana nut bread, and chocolate chip cookies. Even if you’re not teetering on the edge of diabetes, reducing and controlling the amount of sugar in your diet is crucial to your long term health. With recipes like these, it’ll be easy!

The first part of the book is dedicated to explaining what glycemic index is, how sugar and carbs affect your body and why it is important to be conscious of keeping your GI low and healthy. As a fitness fanatic and writer for health/fitness companies, I am constantly reviewing new diet crazes and recipe books... but this is no fad. Anyone with diabetes can use this book as a bible... but for everyone else, it is a great reference to keep close by. Why? Because high glycemic indexes are associated with higher risks for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and dementia. The author provides lists of foods and their GI which are great to refer back to when making a shopping list or planning a dinner. I was surprised that some of the foods I considered healthy diet staples - like bananas, raisins and sweet corn - rated very high in comparison to other foods in the same category. And who knew ripened fruit usually has a higher GI then unripened fruit! They also provide readers with a 14 day kickstart meal plan.The second half of the book contains tons of nutrient rich recipes that pack flavor but keep GI levels low. From pumpkin spice steel cut oatmeal (yum!) to a recipe for spicy grilled shrimp skewers with cucumber cashew slaw (yum again!) there's definitely a recipe for everyone. I was pleasantly surprised to read the desserts. Subbing almond flour and whole wheat flour in chocolate chip cookies and black beans in brownies is just ingenious! I also really loved the appetizer section and side dishes - perfect to bring to parties.Great read and wonderful cookbook! bravo!

The thing I really loved about this book was that it wasn't just a cookbook, but it also explained WHY I should be eating according to the glycemic index and what and how the blood sugar lows and highs effect my body. I really never knew it affected so much of your body - heart, brain, and helping to keep you from getting cancer and diabetes.This book is a very interesting read as well as an eye-opener to the health benefits of eating a low glycemic diet. You'll never get bored of the food because it's all good, natural food that you can eat and there are even recipes for delicious deserts.If you want to improve your overall health and just plain start to feel better, I highly recommend this book. An easy read and easy to understand the complex concepts.

A common sense styled diet meant to limit the sugars in the body. It discusses ingredient options that are better choices and ways to make your diet more conscious of this. A variety of recipes for meals are vegetable and protein heavy while still including a few deserts that balance a high GI ingredient with a low one to give the same taste. I found some of the tables and graphs hard to understand and hard to read in the kindle edition table headers. It wasn’t easy to follow compared to other diet books & occasionally contradictory. The easy recipes had a variety of ingredients that substitute unsweetened fruit juices for sweeteners. I wonder if they actually taste good.