FAT CONTROLLER: The GI Diet

The snug bar of a country pub in the heart of Leicestershire is an unlikely place to find the latest diet guru, but Rick Gallop is settling down with a half of bitter and scanning the menu with every appearance of delight. ‘You have a great selection here,’ he beams at the waitress, noting the sausage and mash, and scampi and chips, before settling on the day’s special " roast pork and apple sauce with all the trimmings.

You couldn’t imagine the late Dr Atkins taking such a laid-back attitude to the heady mix of carb, protein and fat that Gallop is about to wolf down. But Gallop isn’t a standard-issue diet guru, just as his wildly successful GI diet " 13 million worldwide adherents and counting " is no ordinary diet. He sees me raise a quizzical eyebrow as he prepares to tuck in. ‘I have to be off-duty occasionally,’ he protests. ‘One thing I didn’t foresee with this is that I’m now officially a Difficult Dinner Guest; people get very self-conscious when they eat with me, like I’m going to chastise them, or they ask me for absolution " ‘can I have permission to eat French fries tonight?’ " and I say ‘sure, as long as you’re sensible about it’. The GI is pretty laid-back; it’s not some kind of straitjacket.’

In fact, the GI is marketed as a diet, as in food- for-life programme, rather than a Diet, in the faddy, self-denying, quick- fix, no-carb, no-fat, no-fun Atkins/ South Beach/Cabbage Soup sense. It’s based on the principles of the Glycaemic Index, which was drawn up by nutritionists to help diabetics control their blood-sugar levels. Almost by accident, it was found that the ‘good’ foods that took longer to break down also helped volunteers lose weight (see separate box on page 11 for further elucidation of the ‘science bit’).

So far, so arcane. What really helped the GI break through into the mainstream, and reportedly gather in such high-profile advocates as Kylie Minogue, Kim Cattrall, Naomi Campbell, Bill Clinton and Sir Steve Redgrave, was Gallop’s idea to adapt the index into a simple traffic-light system " green for low and ‘good’ GI foods, yellow for foods that should be approached with caution, and red for those that ought to be avoided. In his new GI Diet Shopping and Eating Out Pocket Guide, you can cross-reference every foodstuff on offer from the deli counter (coleslaw bad, hummus good) to McDonald’s (Quorn Premiere burger good, almost everything else bad), and even to your local pub lunch (Gallop’s current meal: wantonly bad).

‘The magic bullet in this whole thing has been the simplicity,’ says Gallop, dubiously contemplating a baleful-looking potato slathered in gravy. ‘People don’t have to go round checking calorific values; we’ve done all the maths for them. And it’s not forbiddingly prescriptive; there are always alternatives.’ His methods seem to have wormed their way into his disciples’ psyches. ‘I have a neurologist friend who’s on the diet, and he said, ‘the ghost of Gallop hangs, Banquo-like, over our dining table’.’ He chuckles. ‘I rather like that.’

Gallop is making a flying visit from Canada; he emigrated to Ontario from the UK in 1964. At 66, he cuts a trim, brisk figure; he still sports a thick, floppy thatch of reddish-brown hair and his glowing skin and twinkling eyes are testament to, respectively, his passion for outdoor pursuits and a resemblance to Sir Ian McKellen in jovial Widow Twanky mode. He worked in the advertising industry before becoming President of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario in 1986, and has a Canadian wife and three ‘six-foot beanpole sons’.

His interests in health and marketing came together with the GI but he claims it all happened by accident after he injured his back in 1996. ‘I gained a stone and a half and losing it became the toughest task of my life. I tried about 12 diets and none of them worked.’

Gallop eventually slimmed down with The Zone, a diet based on similar insulin-controlling principles to the GI, which was developed by biotechnology researcher Barry Sears, but he had major qualms about its long-term efficacy. ‘Firstly, I felt hungry or deprived; the Zone is quite rigid and ultra low-calorie. Secondly, I found the calorie- counting process too complex and time-consuming and the science stuff too confusing. So I thought, if we can find a diet that side-steps those problems, we might be on to something.’

Gallop then heard about the Glycaemic Index research of David Jenkins, a nutritionist at the University of Toronto. The diet was already making waves among non-diabetics in Australia, where nutritional professor Jennie Brand-Miller had published a book on the subject. But it was Gallop and his traffic lights that sent the concept into the stratosphere. ‘As soon as I heard about it, a bell went off in my head and I knew this was the magic bullet’, he says mixing metaphors with gay abandon. He took early retirement from the Foundation and launched the series in 2002; there are now three million copies of his books in circulation in nine languages and 12 countries. You might expect Jenkins and Brand-Miller to be bitter, but they’re not " or, at least, not very. ‘We’re scientists first,’ says Brand-Miller. ‘We aimed for a more educated audience " dieticians and health professionals. Gallop just dumbed down the message.’

‘Hmmm, ‘dumbed down’, that’s rather a pejorative term, isn’t it?’ muses Gallop, toying idly with his uneaten potato. ‘All I did was use what I’d learnt in marketing to package the GI in a way that a public who’ve become accustomed to the 30-second soundbite can accept.’

There’s no doubt that the books have made Gallop a lot of money " he talks of second homes in the Canadian forests, foreign trips (he’s off to Turkey after this brief promotional trip to the UK), and the fact that ‘as a family, we can now certainly do a few more things than we were ever planning to do’. But he’s anxious to distance his work both from the outr end of the diet spectrum " he remains nonplussed at GI followers’ ‘ claims that the diet leaves skin shinier, cranks up energy levels, and even boosts the body’s production of serotonin, thus making you happier, on the grounds that he doesn’t want to sound like a snake- oil salesman " and from the perceived smash-and-grab cynicism of diet- faddism. Yes, he says, a new diet book comes along every six months to cash in on post-Christmas and pre-bikini paranoia. ‘But the reason most of them fail is that they simply don’t work and they’re bad for long-term health. With Atkins you’d have half a pound of bacon for breakfast and no carbohydrates ever. Now, some carbs are good, as are some wholegrains. People will only invest in a diet if it’s easy and pleasurable. Once you’ve lost the weight on the GI you can reintroduce some foods you avoided, but you can keep to the basic plan for the rest of your life. We’re aiming for that kind of longevity.’

This can be achieved, he continues, skipping pudding (good) but ordering a coffee (bad), both through word-of-mouth " ‘that whole ‘you’re looking good, how did you do it?’ thing’ " and responding to feedback. ‘People asked for recipes, so we put them in Living the GI Diet. People wanted something they could carry around with them, so we did the pocket guide. Now we’re doing a family GI book, which my wife’s been working on, to meet all those different constituencies of women who are trying to coordinate the family meal- time " what if she’s pregnant, nursing or menopausal? How can she get her husband to lose a bit of weight? How can she get her kids off Turkey- Twizzlers? And there are two or three other books we’re working on that I can’t talk about yet.’

The GI Pet Planner? Maybe an in-flight-meal guide called The GI in the Sky?

‘Not bad,’ says Gallop, a little wearily.

With great power, Gallop has discovered, comes great responsibility. When the Gallops last took some time off, they returned to find 20,000 emails in their inbox, all with personal GI- related stories to tell and urgent queries to field. ‘We don’t have PAs or anything,’ says Gallop, ‘so it takes some time to get through them. But the sobering thing, I’ve found, is how visceral the weight issue is to people with five or six stone to lose. They tell you that you’ve absolutely, fundamentally changed their lives; that they no longer have to hide behind a tree when they see a camera or that they can walk around the block for the first time in 30 years. You think, Christ, the things one takes for granted.’

It’s this kind of response, he says, polishing off his coffee, that gives him a sense of mission " albeit a mild-mannered rather than messianic one. ‘I just want people to understand how fundamental diet is,’ he stresses. Exercise is all very well, he continues, but did I know that you have to run for 43 miles in order to lose a pound of fat? Or that the average amount of calories expended by a participant in the Boat Race is the equivalent of a chocolate bar? ‘So if you think you can wolf down a cake and burn it off simply by washing the car or taking the dog for a walk, you’re wrong. We have to get these home truths through to people so they don’t get diverted or confused.’

Ultimately, Gallop would like to see the ‘traffic light’ system placed on every foodstuff, though he is also realistic enough to know that it is going to be a long haul: ‘Until we get governments, manufacturers and retailers presenting a united front, we won’t get anywhere.’ He’s spoken at a conference for public health heads in the US, but has had no call from the UK government, though he’d be happy to get involved. ‘After all,’ he says, ‘the top four countries for obesity are all English-speaking " the US, the UK, Australia and Canada. The US statistics are peaking now and everyone else is catching up. The figures are appalling on every level. So I think it’s something we all ought to work on together.’

‘You’re sounding a little guru-esque,’ I venture.

‘Am I?’ he asks with a grin. ‘I suppose I just want people to be more aware of what they’re putting in their bodies. I know I can’t legislate for everybody.’

There’s a stark illustration of this when Gallop drives us back to his mum’s house, where he’s staying during his stopover. She’s 95, and bounds out of her chair to greet us, interrupting her perusal of the newspaper, which, I can’t help but note, is accomplished without the aid of reading glasses.

I ask her the secret of her own rude health, thinking she’ll reveal that it was all down to replacing arborio rice (bad) with basmati (good), or substituting rhubarb (exemplary) for popsicles (beyond the pale); in fact, she says merrily, she puts it down to a lifelong habit of taking cream in her coffee rather than milk, a conjoining of so many bads that it approaches unadulterated evil.

Gallop rolls his eyes. ‘Some people break all the rules and get away with it,’ he says stoically as he sees me out of the house. ‘The GI is there for those who aren’t so fortunate.’ n

The updated ‘GI Diet Shopping and Eating Out Pocket Guide’ by Rick Gallop is published by Virgin, priced pounds 4.99

How the Gi diet works

In order to keep hunger at bay while eating less, you need to consume foods that slowly release sugar into the bloodstream. The Index rates food from one to 100, according to the speed at which they affect sugar levels. The high Gi foods, such as white bread, chips, doughnuts and peanut butter " colour-coded red in Gallop’s books " should be replaced with low Gi foods, colour-coded green, such as lentils, oats, and pulses. The Gi has the backing of the medical establishment; last year, medical journal The Lancet reported that it reduced body fat and the risk of heart disease in rats. Though not even they could promise you that strict Gi adherence will result in a bottom like Kylie’s.

Weighty issue: the history of diets

Milon of Croton, Ancient Greece, Sixth Century BC

A wrestler who competed at six Olympic games, Milon adopted an early form of the Atkins diet, eating 20 pounds of meat in one sitting to prepare for an event. Impressively, he once ate a whole bull in a single day.

William the Conqueror

King of England, 1087

William found that he was too fat to ride his horse. His solution was to take to bed and drink nothing but alcohol. The diet must have worked because he got back on his horse " only to later fall off and die.

Reverend Sylvester Graham, USA, 1830s

The creator of Graham Crackers preached that gluttony led directly to sexual depravity. His solution: a bland, vegetarian diet.

William Banting, London, 1862

Credited with writing the world’s first diet book (Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the Public), Banting lost 3st 8lbs in one year on his low-carb diet plan.

Horace Fletcher, Brussels, 1903

The ‘Chew-chew Man’ recommended chewing each morsel of food 32 times, once for each tooth. He thought food should not be swallowed until it became a liquid. This meant that followers could not eat fibre, and endured chronic constipation.

John and Will Kellogg, Battle Creek, USA, 1906

Dr John Kellogg first put those familiar flakes of corn on the market as a health food, but it wasn’t until Will added sugar that they became a success. The doctor tried, unsuccessfully, to sue his brother for this unhealthy development.

Weight Watchers, America, 1961

Jean Nidetch, weighing in at 15st 4lb, called her friends over and admitted to a cookie habit. Soon meetings were taking place on a much larger scale and word spread, in contrast to waistlines, to create a worldwide dieting business.

Dan Poole