The glycemic index (GI) refers to the ratio of the effect of a certain food on raising blood sugar to that of a standard food (usually glucose), which represents how much blood sugar response will be caused by eating a certain amount of a certain food. It usually reflects the ability of a food to raise blood sugar in the human body. The glycemic index is obtained through human experiments, and most methods to evaluate food are chemical methods, so it is often said that the glycemic index of food is a physiological parameter.
Modern nutrition believes that GI is a more useful nutritional concept than the chemical classification of sugar, which reveals the new relationship between food and health. The results show that GI is related to the occurrence and development of type 2 diabetes. Long-term high GI diet will increase the body's demand for insulin and increase the risk of diabetes. Animal experiments showed that mice fed with high GI diet developed insulin resistance earlier than mice fed with low GI diet.