The International Carbohydrate Quality Consortium (ICQC) is a non-profit, worldwide organisation of leading nutrition scientists from ten countries across three continents. All members and chairs are academic scientists and/or from non-profit organisations. The mission of the ICQC is to support, summarise and disseminate the science around dietary carbohydrate and health, with the objective to harmonise the work of scientists from academia, industry and government.

IQCQ was created on June 7 2013 in Stresa, Italy, in response to scientific, governmental and public needs to have more clarity on the science around dietary carbohydrates and health. Scientific world experts in carbohydrate quality joined a two-day meeting held with the goal of summarising the evidence of the possible impact of carbohydrate quality including glycemic index (a measure of carbohydrate quality), glycemic load (a measure that combines carbohydrate quality and quantity in real-world portion sizes), and overall issues of glycemic response (how the body’s management of blood sugar is affected by both food and lifestyle over time).

The Consortium recommended inclusion of glycemic index and glycemic load in national dietary guidelines and food composition tables, and that packaging labels and symbols on low Gi foods should be considered. They also confirmed low Gi measurements complement other ways of characterising carbohydrate foods (such as fibre and whole grain content) and should be considered in the context of an overall healthy diet.