Insulin Index - Explanation of Index

Explanation of Index

The insulin index shows how much insulin is present in people's blood as a result of a particular food, the glucose index shows how much glucose is present in the blood as a result of a particular food, and the satiety index shows how much a particular food decreases one's propensity to eat more.

Glucose (glycemic) and insulin scores were determined by feeding 1000 kilojoules (239 kilocalories) of the food to the participants and recording the area under the glucose/insulin curve for 120 minutes then dividing by the area under the glucose/insulin curve for white bread. The result being that all scores are relative to white bread. The satiety score was determined by comparing how much food was eaten by participants at a buffet after being fed a fixed number of calories of a particular food while blindfolded (to ensure food appearance was not a factor), then dividing that number by the amount eaten by participants after eating white bread. White bread serves as the baseline of 100. In other words, foods scoring higher than 100 are more satisfying than white bread and those under 100 are less satisfying.

± indicate uncertainty in the data. For example 60 ± 12 means that there's a 95% chance the score is between 60-12 (48) and 60+12 (72), 60 being the highest probability assuming a bell curve. In practice this means that if two foods have large uncertainty and have values close together then you don't really know which score is the higher.