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Glycemic Index vs Glycemic Load: Why Dose Beats Banning

Quick answer: Glycemic index tells you how fast a food's carbs raise blood sugar compared with a reference food. Glycemic load multiplies that by how many digestible carbs you actually eat. Index is about the food; load is about the dose. That's why keto counts grams instead of banning foods: control the dose and the index of any one food matters much less.

In this article

Glycemic index: a ranking

The glycemic index compares how a food raises blood sugar against a control food, usually glucose or white bread (video UygKGoP_BtA). The reference is set at 100. A food with a high index raises blood sugar quickly, gram for gram of carbohydrate; a low-index food does it more slowly.

That's useful, but it leaves out the obvious question: how much of it are you eating? The index is measured on a fixed amount of carbohydrate. It says nothing about whether your portion holds a teaspoon's worth or a bowl's worth.

Glycemic load: the ranking times the dose

Glycemic load puts the dose back in. KetoDick gives the formula in his beginner video: glycemic index times the available digestible carbs, divided by 100 (video UygKGoP_BtA).

Run it on the reference food itself, since its index is 100 by definition:

Same food, same index, ten times the load. Now flip it. A food with half the index eaten in a big portion can carry more load than a small taste of the high-index one. Index alone can't tell you that. Load can.

Index vs load side by side

Glycemic index Glycemic load
What it measures How fast a food's carbs raise blood sugar vs a reference That speed scaled by the grams of digestible carbs you eat
Depends on portion? No Yes
Formula Measured against glucose or white bread (= 100) GI × digestible carbs (g) ÷ 100
What it's good for Comparing foods gram for gram Estimating the real impact of a meal
Where it misleads Makes a small taste of a high-index food look as bad as a plateful Still an estimate; people respond differently
What keto does with it Mostly ignores it for single foods Controls it indirectly by capping total carbs

Why keto counts grams instead of banning foods

Here's the mechanism, in KetoDick's framing. A lot of people reason: insulin is the problem, so any food with a high glycemic index is a problem. He calls that "partly correct" (from the video). The other half is how many grams you eat (video UygKGoP_BtA).

Because index values are all over the place, he says, the people writing dietary recommendations and running studies chose to control the dose rather than the index. Keep total carbs small, say 50 g a day, and the index of any one food becomes nearly negligible, because the overall load is capped (video UygKGoP_BtA).

Do the comparison he does. Going from 250 to 350 g of carbs a day down to 50 g is a huge drop in load, even if some of those 50 g are high-index carbs (video UygKGoP_BtA). Cutting the dose by that much does more than any amount of picking low-index foods inside a 300 g diet.

So what you do is:

  1. Count grams of total carbs. That's your load control. See how many carbs on keto.
  2. Spend most of them on vegetables, where the dose is small for the volume.
  3. Stop keeping a forbidden list. A small, measured amount of something sweet or starchy fits if you count it.
  4. Watch for hidden high-index ingredients. He singles out maltodextrin, a bulking agent with a high glycemic index that shows up in products marketed as low-sugar (video ffwBPoKxlDI). More in hidden carbs and reading nutrition labels.
  5. Be honest about the dose. "A spoonful fits" is true. "A spoonful" that becomes the bowl isn't.

What the research says

The evidence pages behind this blog don't include studies measuring glycemic index or load of specific foods, so no food-by-food GI table is given here. If you want one, look for tables that cite the testing lab, and remember individual responses vary.

KetoDick's take

"There are no banned foods" is one of his steadiest positions. Some foods, he says, are only keto at an eyedropper's worth; Coca-Cola is effectively out, but the principle is the dose (video UygKGoP_BtA). He puts it in the old line "the dose makes the poison" and says that, in a calorie deficit, the diet tolerates more (video ffwBPoKxlDI).

He also pushes back on "keto police" rules from books and gurus that declare foods keto or not keto (video ffwBPoKxlDI), and warns that strict clean-eating rules can turn into an eating disorder of their own (video xyEZL0HuejI). Dose control is the more forgiving system: one counted spoonful is a number, not a failure.

One claim of his goes past what the evidence pages here can check: he says a carrot can spike blood sugar more than a Snickers bar (video 1JbK1_ClDmY). It illustrates the index-vs-load point, but no source here tests that comparison, so treat it as his example, not a measured result.

Who should check with a doctor first

If you take insulin or another diabetes medication that lowers blood sugar, a big cut in carbohydrate load can change how much you need. He tells anyone on medication to review the plan with their doctor, especially dosing (video UygKGoP_BtA). See keto and medications.

Key takeaways