Serving Size: Usually taken as a standardized extract or tea (no standard food serving)
This food has too little carbohydrate for a glycemic index to be measured.
The largest trial ever run on ginkgo and memory found nothing. The Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory study followed 3,069 adults aged 75 and over for a median of 6.1 years, half taking 120mg of ginkgo extract twice a day and half taking a placebo. It did not reduce dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, and the rate in the ginkgo group came out slightly higher rather than lower (DeKosky et al., Journal of the American Medical Association, 2008).
That trial asked whether ginkgo keeps dementia from starting. For people who already have dementia, a Cochrane review of 13 placebo-controlled trials in 3,288 people found there "may be small to moderate benefits at six months", on low-certainty evidence (Wieland et al., Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2026).
Men’s health: a benefit for blood circulation is possible but not guaranteed. Forearm blood flow rose in 16 healthy adults (Mehlsen et al., Clinical Physiology and Functional Imaging, 2002), but a Cochrane review of 14 trials in people with leg pain from narrowed arteries found "no evidence that Ginkgo biloba has a clinically significant benefit" (Nicolaï et al., Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2013).
Safety: the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies ginkgo extract as "possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B)" on rodent studies; the European Medicines Agency considers those tumors specific to rodents.
Ginkgo leaf is a supplement, not a food. There is no ordinary serving of it, no nutrition panel worth reading, and nothing here to put on a plate.
Join a growing community of people who are choosing clarity over confusion, and progress over perfection.
GI measures how fast a food raises blood sugar.
Tells you how big that rise actually is once portion size is factored in.
Watermelon has a high GI (it digests quickly) but a low GL because a normal serving doesn’t
contain many carbs so the actual blood-sugar impact is small.
Understanding both GI and GL gives you a clearer picture of how foods affect your blood sugar both the speed of the rise and the true impact based on the portion you eat.
Or jump straight to: