Low glycemic index foods, by band and category

Low glycemic index foods score 55 or under on a scale where pure glucose is 100. Legumes, intact whole grains, most dairy, and firm fruit sit there. Treat any published number as a range — GI shifts with variety, ripeness, and how long the food is cooked.

What counts as a low glycemic index food

The glycemic index ranks carbohydrate foods by how far they raise blood glucose over about two hours against a reference dose. Test portions are matched for available carbohydrate, usually 50 grams, so bread and lentils get compared at the same carb load rather than the same weight.

Three bands do the sorting:

• Low: 55 or under
• Medium: 56–69
• High: 70 or above

Two caveats before reading any table. Most modern values use glucose as the 100 reference, but older tables used white bread, which inflates every figure by roughly 1.4× — a "GI 100" bread in one table is a GI 70 bread in another. And published figures are averages from small test groups; the same food retested elsewhere can land 10 to 15 points apart. Foods with low glycemic index values in one dataset sometimes cross into medium in another.

Foods with almost no carbohydrate — meat, fish, eggs, oils, hard cheese, leafy greens — get no meaningful GI at all. They aren't low glycemic foods; the measurement simply doesn't apply.

Low glycemic index foods by category

Category	Food	Typical GI range	Band
Legumes	Soybeans, boiled	15–20	Low
Legumes	Lentils, boiled	25–35	Low
Legumes	Chickpeas, boiled	25–35	Low
Grains	Pearl barley, boiled	25–35	Low
Grains	White pasta, al dente	45–55	Low
Grains	Rolled or steel-cut oats	50–58	Low
Grains	Basmati rice, boiled	50–58	Low
Grains	Brown rice, boiled	60–69	Medium
Grains	Whole wheat sandwich bread	65–75	Medium–high
Grains	Cornflakes	75–85	High
Fruit	Cherries	20–25	Low
Fruit	Apple, pear, orange	35–45	Low
Fruit	Banana, ripe	50–62	Low–medium
Fruit	Watermelon	72–80	High
Dairy	Milk, plain yogurt	15–40	Low
Starchy veg	New potato, boiled	50–65	Low–medium
Starchy veg	Sweet potato, boiled	45–60	Low–medium
Starchy veg	Russet potato, baked	85–110	High
Sweetener	Table sugar (sucrose)	60–65	Medium

Legumes

The lowest glycemic index foods on published tables are beans and pulses. Boiled soybeans land in the teens; lentils, chickpeas, and kidney beans usually test in the 20s and 30s. Intact cell walls and a starch high in amylose, which gelatinizes less readily than amylopectin, both slow digestion. Canned pulses run slightly higher than dried-and-boiled but stay in the low band.

Grains

Color is a weak predictor. Whole wheat sandwich bread milled to fine flour often tests in the high 60s to mid 70s, no better than white, because grinding destroys the structure that slowed digestion. Intact or coarsely cracked kernels — pearl barley, steel-cut oats, whole rye, bulgur — hold the low band. Pasta is the outlier: extrusion packs starch into a dense protein matrix, so even white pasta tests around 45–55 cooked al dente. Rice spans all three bands, with high-amylose basmati and parboiled varieties near 50 and short-grain sticky rice past 70.

Low glycemic index fruits

Whole fruit is mostly low, held down by fiber, water, and fructose, which barely raises blood glucose on its own. Cherries, grapefruit, apples, pears, oranges, plums, and berries cluster from the 20s to the low 40s. Ripeness moves the needle: a green-tipped banana tests near 40, while a fully spotted one reaches the low 60s as resistant starch converts to sugars — the same reason its sugar content per banana shifts with time on the counter. Juice is a different food; stripping the fiber speeds the response, and drying concentrates the carbohydrate into a much smaller portion.

Dairy

Milk and plain yogurt test roughly 15–40 despite their lactose, because milk protein and fat slow gastric emptying. One honest caveat: dairy raises insulin more than its GI predicts. The index measures glucose, not the hormone response, and the two don't always track.

Starchy vegetables

Potatoes swing the widest of anything on the list. Waxy new potatoes, boiled and eaten warm, test around 50–65. A baked russet can reach 85–110 — at the top of that range it raises glucose faster than glucose itself, because oven heat fully gelatinizes the starch and ruptures the cells. Sweet potato depends on cultivar and method, with boiled testing well below roasted. Carrots deserve a correction: early tables listed cooked carrot near 90, a figure that survived in popular writing for decades, while later testing put it in the 30s to 40s.

High glycemic index foods, for contrast

High glycemic index foods share a pattern — starch ground fine, fully cooked, puffed, or stripped of fiber. Cornflakes and puffed rice cereals, most sandwich breads, instant oats, rice cakes, mashed and baked potatoes, and short-grain rice all sit at 70 or above. Maltodextrin, common in sports drinks and processed snacks, tests at or above glucose. Table sugar is the surprise at about 60–65, medium rather than high, because half of it is fructose. A low number is not an endorsement.

Four levers that move a food down a band

1. Cook it less. Al dente pasta tests roughly ten points below the same pasta boiled soft. Firmer rice and potatoes behave the same way — less gelatinized starch, slower digestion.
2. Cool it, then reheat it. Potatoes, rice, and pasta chilled overnight form retrograded starch, a resistant starch the small intestine can't fully break down. Reheating keeps much of it, so yesterday's potato salad or fried rice produces a smaller rise than the same food fresh.
3. Keep the structure. Whole fruit over juice, intact grains over flour, whole beans over bean flour. Particle size is one of the strongest predictors of GI within a food type.
4. Pair it. Protein, fat, and acidity slow gastric emptying. Olive oil, yogurt, nuts, or a vinegar dressing lower a meal's response even when the carbohydrate item is unchanged.

Glycemic load catches what the index misses

GI describes carbohydrate quality and says nothing about quantity. Glycemic load fixes that: GI × available carbohydrate per serving ÷ 100, banded low at 10 or under, medium 11–19, high 20 or more. Watermelon is the standard example — a GI near 72–80, but a 120-gram wedge carries only about 6 grams of carbohydrate, putting its load around 4. A large serving of low-GI basmati can post a high load on volume alone.

Where added sugar overlaps

Many low-GI swaps cut added sugar as a side effect: plain yogurt instead of the fruit-on-the-bottom cup, whole fruit instead of juice, steel-cut oats instead of a flavored instant packet. The World Health Organization recommends keeping free sugars under 10% of daily energy, with a conditional further reduction to 5%, and the American Heart Association's added-sugar ceilings are 25 grams a day for women and 36 for men. To see how those swaps land against a daily gram limit, Sugar Tracker is an added-sugar tracking app for iPhone.

FAQ

What food has the lowest glycemic index?

Among foods carrying enough carbohydrate to be tested, boiled soybeans sit lowest, in the teens, with other pulses following in the 20s and 30s. Non-starchy vegetables and pure protein or fat foods score lower still on paper, but they hold too little carbohydrate to produce a meaningful value.

Are bananas low glycemic index fruits?

It depends on ripeness. A banana with green tips tests around 40, comfortably low, because much of its carbohydrate is still resistant starch. As it ripens, that starch converts to sugars and the value climbs toward the low 60s.

Is brown rice low GI?

Usually not. Most brown rice tests in the 60s, in the medium band, because the bran slows digestion less than people expect. High-amylose varieties such as basmati and parboiled rice test lower, often near 50, whether white or brown.

Does cooling pasta or potatoes really lower the glycemic index?

Measurably, yes. Chilling gelatinized starch lets the molecules recrystallize into resistant starch, which resists digestion in the small intestine, and part of the effect survives reheating. The shift is modest — one band at best, not a transformation.

Does low GI mean low in sugar?

No. The index ranks blood-glucose response, not sugar content. Fructose scores low while still being a sugar, and high-fat sweets often test low because fat slows digestion. Sugar content is a separate number on the nutrition label.