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Glycemic Index (GI) Food Guide: Low, Medium, and High GI Foods

The glycemic index ranks how quickly a food raises blood sugar. Here is what the categories mean and where common foods fall.

Low GI (55 or below)

Foods like lentils, chickpeas, most beans, apples, oranges, and steel-cut oats digest slowly and cause a gradual rise in blood sugar. These are generally the best choice for sustained energy and blood sugar control.

Medium GI (56-69)

Foods such as whole wheat bread, brown rice, sweet corn, and bananas sit in the middle. They raise blood sugar faster than low-GI foods but still more gradually than refined starches.

High GI (70 and above)

White rice, white bread, potatoes, and most breakfast cereals are digested and absorbed quickly, causing a rapid spike in blood sugar followed by a faster drop.

GI is not the whole picture

Glycemic load (GL) factors in portion size, since GI alone measures only how fast the carbohydrate is absorbed, not how much carbohydrate a typical serving contains. Watermelon has a high GI but a low GL because a serving has relatively little digestible carbohydrate.

Cooking and ripeness change GI

Overcooked pasta has a higher GI than pasta cooked al dente, and a very ripe banana has a higher GI than a slightly green one, because both processes break starches down into more easily digested sugars.

Combining foods lowers the average

Eating a high-GI food alongside protein, fat, or fiber — like white rice with vegetables and fish — slows overall digestion and blunts the blood sugar spike compared to eating the high-GI food alone.

How the glycemic index is measured

The GI scale compares a food containing 50 grams of digestible carbohydrate against a reference food (pure glucose, set at 100) by measuring blood sugar response over two hours in test subjects. A food with a GI of 50 raises blood sugar half as fast, on average, as pure glucose. Because it depends on human testing, published GI values for the same food can vary somewhat between studies and food preparation methods.

Who tends to use GI, and why

People managing diabetes or insulin resistance often use GI to plan meals that avoid sharp blood sugar spikes, and some endurance athletes use high-GI foods deliberately for quick energy during exercise. For most people, GI is one useful lens among several — total carbohydrate amount, fiber content, and overall diet pattern matter just as much as any single food's GI ranking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a low-GI diet automatically a healthy diet?

Not necessarily. Some low-GI foods, like ice cream or potato chips, are low GI mainly because of their fat content, which slows sugar absorption but does not make them nutritious. GI should be considered alongside overall nutritional quality, not as a standalone health score.

Does GI matter for people without diabetes?

It can still be useful for managing energy levels and appetite, since high-GI meals tend to cause a faster subsequent drop in blood sugar that can trigger hunger sooner. But for most healthy people, overall diet quality matters more than optimizing every meal for GI.