Adjusting your diet changes your life, according to the author and biochemist Jessie Inchauspe. Food sequencing is one of her recommendations that have gone viral since mainstream media interviews and posts on Instagram.
Inchauspe explains that when a person eats salads first, followed by proteins, and finished with starchy carbohydrates, their blood glucose spikes will be flattened, which is healthy for most. Despite what skeptics may think, there is some truth to Inchauspe's recommendations.
Understanding Glucose Spikes
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Glucose spikes occur in a person's bloodstream roughly 30 to 60 minutes after eating carbohydrates. Different things determine how high and long glucose spikes last. These include what the food ate with or before the carbohydrate, how much fiber is in the carbs, and the body's ability to secrete and use insulin.
For people diagnosed with diabetes, postprandial hypotension, reactive hypoglycemia, and those who have had bariatric surgery, tactics to lower glucose peaks are vital. Because prolonged peaks can have lasting detrimental effects on the person's hormones and proteins which can also cause inflammation, reports ScienceAlert.
Scientists have long known that eating high-fiber foods, like salads slows the rate at which food exits the stomach. While proteins and fats trigger the secretion of a hormone that mops up glucose in the blood, which makes a huge impact on people with diabetes that want to improve blood sugar control.
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Truth Behind Food Sequencing
Most studies and research on the effectiveness of food sequencing often involve a preload of fiber, fat, or protein before the participant's meal. Typically, the preload is a liquid concoction given roughly 30 minutes before the carb.
A previous study published in the journal Diabetes Care, titled "Effects of a Protein Preload on Gastric Emptying, Glycemia, and Gut Hormones After a Carbohydrate Meal in Diet-Controlled Type 2 Diabetes," suggests that drinking a whey protein drink 30 minutes before a mashed potato meal was effective in slowing gastric emptying. A better option for reducing glucose spikes than drinking water before every meal.
Although previous evidence has demonstrated how eating proteins before carbs helps in the effective reduction of glucose spikes, evidence for eating food groups specialty, especially ins sequence, during an average meal isn't as conclusive.
In an interview with ABC, Inchauspe explains that fiber, fats, and proteins don't mix in the stomach; but they do. But nutrients do not exit the stomach until they have been finely churned into small particle sizes.
Steaks take longer than mashed food to be curbed into small particles. Given additional liquids that empty faster than solids, people tend to complete their meal in roughly 15 minutes; although it's a bit of proof for Inchauspe's recommendation, it isn't very strong evidence.
A small-scale study tested five varying meal sequences in 16 people without diabetes who were asked to eat their meal in 15 minutes. Results showed no overall differences in the glucose spikes of the group that ate vegetables before meat and carbs vs. other sequences.
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