Current Development of in Vitro and in Vivo Methods for Predicting Glycemic Indexes of Carbohydrate Foods

Abstract

Glycemic index (GI) is a key indicator for evaluating the postprandial glycemic response to carbohydrate foods. A low GI diet can not only help to control appetite and delay hunger, but also benefit weight control and improve glucose and lipid levels in diabetic patients. The development of low GI foods has thus become a hotspot in current food research. At present, the international standard ISO 26642:2010, issued by the International Standards Organization (ISO), is the gold standard for measuring the GI values of foods using human subjects around the world. However, human testing has some disadvantages, such as individual differences may lead to significantly different results, even for the same foods, and it is costly and time consuming, and should be ethical, and it is unsuitable for high-throughput testing of food GI values. For this reason, researchers have successively developed various in vitro models to predict food GI values. This article focuses on reviewing the current in vitro and in vivo methods for predicting the GI values of foods, with a particular focus on their advantages and disadvantages, as well as their future developments. The current paper is aimed to provide new ideas for the development and promotion of low GI foods.

Keywords

• glycemic index; carbohydrate; starch; assay; in vitro digestion