Using GL to sort the good, the bad and the suicidal 122 People with diabetes need to generally lower their intake of carbohydrate-rich foods that will be broken down into glucose because their reduced levels of insulin mean they are not as effective at reducing high levels of glucose in their blood. Those who have to inject themselves with insulin( Type 1 Diabetes) need to know which foods will significantly increase their blood glucose so they can compensate for this by increasing their dose of insulin. Out of the need to understand the GI of different foods a lot of research has gone into this field in recent years. Most of it has been done by two groups of researchers, one in Australia at Sydney University and the other at Toronto University in Canada. Each food studied was given a number and this was called its GI. The GI of a given food was calculated by giving it to a small group of human guinea pigs and then taking blood samples to measure the resulting blood glucose over the next couple of hours. The GI was then calculated by comparing it to a standard, set at 100, which was the amount of blood glucose increase that resulted from drinking a standard amount of liquid glucose. Over the years researchers have amassed an enormous data bank with GIs for all sorts of foods. But what does this have to do with losing weight? The glucose we don’ t burn up is turned into fat. Today, we create much more body fat from carbohydrate than we do from fat in our diet. Second, and somewhat more controversially, it is argued that because insulin stops cells from burning fat we should avoid eating foods that have a high GI and therefore stimulate the release of insulin because this will prevent our body from burning off fat. High GI carbohydrates may also‘ wear out’ our pancreas – the organ that produces insulin – and increase the risk of Type 2 Diabetes.