Jenkins Glycemic Index
Jenkins changes the chapter’s tone.
He is not mainly a contrarian pamphleteer. He gives the story a measurable tool.
The glycemic index compared carbohydrate foods by their effect on blood glucose after eating. It made visible a fact that ordinary food categories could hide: different starches can produce different physiological responses.1
That does not make the index a magic number.
Meal composition, food processing, mixed diets, individual metabolism, and portion size all matter. Glycemic load was developed partly because portion size matters as well as index value.2
But Jenkins helps the reader see why “bread” cannot be treated as one undifferentiated object.
White bread could function as a reference food in glycemic testing because it produced a strong response. That is not a theological claim. It is a measurement claim.
The old sacred vocabulary now meets a laboratory curve.
Related sections: Yudkin Sugar And Resistance; Taubes And The Public Argument.
Footnotes
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Jenkins et al., “Glycemic Index of Foods,” 362-66. Primary research source. ↩
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Livia S. A. Augustin et al., “Glycemic Index, Glycemic Load and Glycemic Response: An International Scientific Consensus Summit,” Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases 25 (2015): 795-815. Secondary review and consensus source. ↩