Glucose Revolution: The life-changing power of balancing your blood sugar

by Jessie Inchauspé

What is the right order? It’s fibre first, protein and fat second, starches and sugars last.

If starches or sugars are the first thing to hit your stomach, they get to your small intestine very quickly. There, they are broken down into glucose molecules, which then make it through to the bloodstream very quickly. That creates a glucose spike. The more carbs you eat and the quicker you eat them, the more forcefully the load of glucose appears – the bigger the glucose spike.

Fibre has three superpowers: first, it reduces the action of alpha-amylase, the enzyme that breaks starch down into glucose molecules. Second, it slows down gastric emptying: when fibre is present, food trickles from sink to pipe more slowly. Finally, it creates a viscous mesh in the small intestine; this mesh makes it harder for glucose to make it through to the bloodstream. Through these mechanisms, fibre slows down the breakdown and absorption of any glucose that lands in the sink after it; the result is that fibre flattens our glucose curves.

Foods containing fat also slow down gastric emptying, so eating them before rather than after carbs also helps flatten our glucose curves. The takeaway? Eating carbs after everything else is the best move.

When we eat foods in the right order – veggies first, protein and fats second, carbs last – not only do we slow down the speed of the blocks, we even cut down on the quantity of blocks thanks to the mesh that fibre adds to our intestine. The slower the trickling of glucose into our bloodstream, the flatter our glucose curves and the better we feel. We can eat exactly the same thing – but by eating carbs last, we make a big difference in our physical and mental well-being.

I categorise fruits in the ‘sugars’ category, because although they contain fibre, they are made up mostly of glucose, fructose and sucrose – aka sugars. Therefore they should be eaten last.

How quickly can I eat the foods one after the other? Many different timings were studied in clinical settings – 0 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes; they all seem to work. As long as you eat starch and sugars last, even if it’s without stopping, you will flatten your glucose curve.

The results were conclusive: 100 calories of fructose are worse for us than 100 calories of glucose. This is why it’s always better to eat something starchy than something sweet

Let’s repeat that: people on a glucose-flattening diet can lose more weight while eating more calories than people who eat fewer calories but spike their glucose levels.

A 2021 review analysing 60 weight loss studies proved that insulin reduction is primordial and always precedes weight loss.

reactive hypoglycaemia. When our glucose level dips and before our body brings it back up by releasing extra glucose into the blood, we can feel side effects: hunger, cravings, shakiness, light-headedness, or tingling in our hands and feet.

first thing in the morning, when we are in our fasted state, our bodies are the most sensitive to glucose. Our sink (or stomach) is empty, so anything that lands in it will be digested extremely quickly. That’s why eating sugars and starches at breakfast often leads to the biggest spike of the day.

sugar is sugar; it’s the same whether it comes from corn or beets and has been crystallised into white powder, which is how table sugar is made, or from oranges and kept in liquid form, which is how fruit juice is made. Regardless of which plant they come from, glucose and fructose molecules have the same effect on us.

if we are going to eat some sugar, a whole piece of fruit is the best vehicle for it. First, in a whole piece of fruit, sugar is found in small quantities. And you’d be hard pressed to eat three apples or three bananas in one sitting – which is how much can be found in a smoothie.

Second, in a whole piece of fruit, sugar is always accompanied by fibre. As I explained earlier, fibre significantly reduces the spike caused by any sugar we eat.

As soon as we blend, squeeze, dry and concentrate the sugar and remove the fibre in fruit, it hits our system fast and hard – and leads to a spike.

Essentially, as soon as it’s juiced, dried, candied, canned, or turned to jam, you should think of fruit as dessert, just as you would a slice of cake. One 300ml bottle of orange juice (whether freshly squeezed, bought, with or without pulp) contains around 25 grams of sugar – that’s the concentrated sugar of three whole oranges, with none of the fibre. It’s the same amount of sugar as in a can of Coca-Cola. With 300ml of orange juice, you’ve reached the limit of the number of grams of sugar you should consume in a day, according to the American Heart Association (it recommends no more than 25 grams for women and 36 for men).

But when we’re done eating, our organs are just getting started – and they keep working for four hours on average after our last bite. This busy time is the ‘post-eating,’ or postprandial, state.

When our body is not in the postprandial state, things are a little easier. Our organs are on clean-up duty, replacing damaged cells with new ones and clearing our systems. For instance, the gurgling we feel in our small intestine when we haven’t eaten in a few hours is our empty digestive tract cleaning its walls. When our body is not in the postprandial state, our insulin levels come down and we can go back to burning fat instead of stashing it.

when they drank vinegar before eating a meal rich in carbohydrates, the glucose spike from that meal was reduced by 8 to 30 per cent.

This tells us that drinking vinegar does not flatten glucose curves by increasing the amount of insulin in the body. And this is a very good thing. Indeed, you could flatten a glucose curve by injecting someone with insulin or giving them a medication or a drink that would release more insulin into their system. This is because the more insulin there is in the body, the more your liver, muscle and fat cells work to remove any excess glucose from the bloodstream and quickly store it away.

What we really want to do is flatten our glucose curves without increasing the amount of insulin in the body. Which is what vinegar does.

alpha-amylase? This is the enzyme that in plants chops starch back up into glucose and in humans turns bread to glucose in our mouths. Scientists have found that the acetic acid in vinegar temporarily inactivates alpha-amylase. As a result, sugar and starch are transformed into glucose more slowly, and the glucose hits our system more softly.

These two factors – glucose being released into the body more slowly and our muscles uptaking it more quickly – mean that there is less free-flowing glucose present, so less of a glucose spike.

What’s more, acetic acid not only reduces the amount of insulin present – which helps us get back to fat-burning mode – it also has a remarkable effect on our DNA. It tells our DNA to reprogramme slightly so that our mitochondria burn more fat. Yep. For real.

Grab a straw, down the drink either less than 20 minutes before, during the course of, or less than 20 minutes after eating the glucose-spiking food.

As soon as the influx of glucose (from a large bowl of rice, for example) hits our body, two things can happen. If we stay sedentary as the spike reaches its peak, glucose floods our cells and overwhelms our mitochondria. Free radicals are produced, inflammation increases and excess glucose is stored away in the liver, muscles and fat.

If, on the other hand, we contract our muscles as the glucose moves from our intestine to our bloodstream, our mitochondria have a higher burning capacity. They aren’t overwhelmed as quickly – they are thrilled to use the extra glucose to make ATP to fuel our working muscles.

If we sit on a chair for an hour after eating cake, the glucose will accumulate in our body and cause a spike. If we exercise instead, the glucose will almost immediately be used up by our muscles. It won’t accumulate and cause a spike.

How quickly after eating should I exercise? Monica gets active 20 minutes after eating, but you can exercise anytime within 70 minutes after eating to see an effect. As mentioned above, you want your muscles to start contracting before the glucose spike reaches its peak.

Exercising after a meal seems to be the best option, but before is also useful.

exercising before dinner (eating 30 minutes after the workout was over) lowered their glucose and insulin spikes by 18 per cent and 35 per cent, respectively, as opposed to 30 per cent and 48 per cent if the exercise was started 45 minutes after dinner.

When you exercise and you haven’t yet eaten, i.e., you are engaging in fasted exercise, your liver releases glucose into your blood to fuel the mitochondria in your muscles. This shows up on a glucose monitor as a spike – because there is one. These spikes do cause oxidative stress, by increasing free radicals, but the exercise that causes them also increases your ability to get rid of free radicals, and, importantly, that improved defence against free radicals lingers longer than the acute, exercise-induced production of free radicals. Thus, the net effect of exercise is to reduce oxidative stress. Exercise is therefore considered a hormetic stress on the body. This means that it is a type of beneficial stress that causes our bodies to become more resilient.

Now you know the amazing combo for snacking on something sweet without incurring a big glucose spike in your body: vinegar before, exercise after.

as we learned in Hack 4 (‘Flatten your breakfast curve’), because of how insulin works, the glucose in sweets or a granola bar tends to go to storage rather than to be used as fuel. So when we eat something sweet, there is actually less energy circulating in our body after digestion than when we eat something savoury.

Good fats are saturated (fat from animals, such as butter, ghee and coconut oil) or monounsaturated (from fruit and nuts such as avocados, macadamia nuts and olives). For cooking, use saturated fats – they’re less likely to oxidise with heat. Monounsaturated fats, such as olive and avocado, can’t stand the heat as well. A good rule of thumb to distinguish between them: cook with fats that are solid at room temperature when you can. Bad fats (which inflame us, harm our heart health, make us gain visceral fat and increase our insulin resistance) are polyunsaturated and trans fats, which are found in processed oils – made from soybean, corn, rapeseed, safflower and rice bran oil – and fried foods, and fast foods.

don’t be fooled into thinking the ‘low-fat’ version is better for you: 5 per cent Greek yoghurt will help your glucose curves much more than a low-fat yoghurt will.

All veggies under the sun provide fibre. Along with nuts and seeds, they are the best clothes!

Protein is found in animal products, such as eggs, meat, fish, dairy and cheese, and also in many plant sources, such as nuts, seeds and beans.

After a glucose drop, our liver quickly (within 20 minutes) steps in, releases stored glucose from those reserves into our bloodstream and brings our levels back to normal. At that point, the craving often dissipates.

Alcohols that keep our levels steady are wine (red, white, rosé, sparkling) as well as spirits (gin, vodka, tequila, whisky and even rum).

Watch out for mixers: adding fruit juice, something sweet, or tonic will cause one.

When it comes to beer, which causes spikes because of its high carb content, ale and lager are preferable to stout (such as Guinness) and porter.

The many names of sugar on an ingredients list Look for these: agave nectar, agave syrup, barley malt, beet sugar, brown rice syrup, brown sugar, cane juice crystals, cane sugar, caramel, coconut sugar, icing sugar, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, crushed fruit, date sugar, dextrin, dextrose, evaporated cane juice, fructose, fruit juice, fruit juice concentrate, fruit purée concentrate, galactose, glucose, glucose syrup solids, golden sugar, golden syrup, grape sugar, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), honey, icing sugar, malt syrup, maltodextrin, maltose, maple syrup, muscovado sugar, panela sugar, pressed fruit, raw sugar, rice syrup, sucanat, sucrose, sugar.

On a Nutrition Facts label on a packaged food, calories may be what’s written in the biggest type, but it’s not what will tell you whether the food is going to cause a spike or not.

The grams next to Total Carbohydrate and Total Sugars represent the molecules that cause a glucose spike: starches and sugars. The more grams of these, the more the food will lead to a rise in your glucose, fructose and insulin levels and set off the chain reaction that keeps you craving sweet things.

So here’s a tip: for dry foods, look at the ratio of Total Carbohydrate to Dietary Fibre. Select items whose ingredients get the closest to 1 gram of Dietary Fibre for each 5 grams of Total Carbohydrate. Here’s how to do it: find the number next to Total Carbohydrate and divide it by five. Try to find a food that has that amount of Dietary Fibre (or as close to it as possible).