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Watermelon — the Fruit of the Season
A Bite-Size Read for Your Health and Waistline
Get excited! It’s summer-ish. When the temps are high, few foods sound better than watermelon, the fruit of the season.
You may hear health nuts shun watermelon while others sing its praises. What’s the controversy? The watermelon story is one of balance, the balance between glycemic index and glycemic load to keep your blood sugar even and your body metabolically well. Watermelon has a high-glycemic index of around 80, on a scale of 0 to 100 of a 100g serving. Glycemic index refers to the quality of that food with this “score,” watermelon is likely to spike your blood sugar. However, the glycemic load is low. Glycemic load refers to the quantity of the food. This means it takes a lot of watermelon for it to spike your blood sugar. The tricky part, though, is that watermelon is easy to eat a lot of!
Nutritionally speaking, a ⅔ cup serving of watermelon contains about 30 calories, 0.6g of protein, 0.4g of fiber, and 0.2g of fat. Essentially, it’s negligible on the protein, fiber, and fat. There are also 7.6g of carbs and 6.2g of sugar. Truthfully, watermelon’s not necessarily adding to our nutrition in terms of macronutrients. Translating this into usable information, watermelon is giving us mostly carbohydrates in the form of sugar (hence the high glycemic index rating). On the other…
