For the attention of Hamish Renton, Head of Health & Diet, Tesco
I was interested to see in Tesco's GI leaflet that minced beef, bacon and double cream are listed as very high GI foods, and fresh chicken as medium GI. Surely these are misprints? The GI measures how rapidly glucose rises in the blood when the quantity of the food that contains 50 g of carbohydrates is eaten - fresh beef and chicken do not contain any carbohydrates (unless Tesco have injected them with glucose) and it is hard to imagine anyone consuming enough double cream to equate to 50 g carbs!
Please advise, as I believe your leaflet is either seriously wrong, or seriously misleading to those who are trying to keep their blood sugar/insulin levels under control.
Jackie Bushell
Low Carb is Easy.com - online information & support resource for low carbers / low GI dieters worldwide
www.lowcarbiseasy.com
www.gidietrecipes.com
Dear Jackie,
Many thanks for taking the time to contact us with your comments regarding the Gi leaflet.
The leaflet was based on information in the Tesco 'Gi Guide' (1st & 2nd editions) by Rick Gallop and Hamish Renton (Virgin Books). In this book, many of the principles are the same as used within Rick Gallop's 'The Gi Diet' book. The latter not only focuses on Gi but also on foods which should be eaten regularly or sparingly when trying to lose weight. The food database in the Tesco book is therefore based on these principles rather than from a purist Gi perspective. Another reason for the range of foods listed in the book was to ensure foods from each of the main foods groups were included in order to offer variety and balance to the diet. There are instructions in the book for use with the table (page 118) which state the following: 'The foods have been divided into three groups – high Gi (red), medium Gi (yellow), and low Gi (green) - but since the Gi bases its measurements on the carbohydrate content in a food, it is sometimes difficult for those who want to try and lose weight to determine which foods that are officially low Gi are also good for dieting. So any item in bold is also recommended for eating if you want to lose weight.' In the 2nd edition it additionally states 'Some of the foods listed cannot be Gi tested by standard methods as they contain no or virtually no carbohydrate. However, for the purpose of including a complete balance of foods, they have been included in the listings and are marked with a cross ().'
Unfortunately, these important points weren't also replicated in the leaflet and so some of the foods in that list were taken out of context without an explanation of the principles behind their presence. In essence, you are correct in that foods with virtually no carbohydrate should not be included on a list of foods with a Gi rating and the leaflet was indeed missing the supporting information, which was so crucial for their presence to be justified.
This also affected the statement below the table stating that all testing was carried out by Oxford Brookes University – which is clearly not the case with the offending products.
To remedy the situation, all foods with too little carbohydrate to be Gi tested will be deleted from the table prior to the next print run. The pdf of the same leaflet will be changed on our website.
We make every effort to promote a consistent message but occasionally mistakes are made. Further to our investigation, we have taken steps to ensure this should not happen again.
I hope this fully explains the situation and remedies the leaflet to one which is satisfactory with regards to technical information.
Regards
Karen Tonks
TL&T Manager - Labelling and Nutrition Policy
Tesco Stores Ltd
