Can glucose spikes be avoided by eating in a certain order?

James - Glucose spikes are not something most of us have to worry about, but for diabetics they can be quite dangerous. I spoke to Giles Yeo from the University of Cambridge to help find your answer, Steve.

Giles - A glucose spike is not just a slow rise, but a really sharp mountainous, Himalayan like spike in your glucose levels immediately after you've eaten an item of food. Type 1 diabetics don't have the insulin naturally in them to actually handle it, so they want to make sure that their glucose doesn't spike too much by postprandially, after a meal, injecting insulin. Now, type 2 diabetics want to make sure that they control their blood sugar levels because they can't control it properly either. Their tissues in their body tend to be insulin resistant.

James - What foods are most likely to bring on a glucose spike?

Giles - For sure, anything with refined sugar in it. So, added sugar, and this includes not only the powdered white stuff, but honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, all of these supposedly better sugars. They're not better sugars, they're the same sugars: they taste better, but they're the same sugar. And any kind of refined complex carbohydrates. So these are starches that don't actually have any fibre in them, so if you're taking white flour, for example, or white rice. Fibre prevents the sugars from being released so freely in complex carbohydrates. So if the fiber is not there, then there's only one step away from converting starch into glucose, just one little cut, because starch are strings of glucose. So those are the two types of food you want to avoid.

James - Because this seems to be the crux of what Steve's potential workaround to blood sugar spikes, that if you front load your meals with those foods, vegetables, these fibrous foods, and then you save your carbohydrates and sugars until the end of your meal, you might become less susceptible to these dangerous blood sugar levels.

Giles - And he's absolutely right. Wherever he is getting his information from is correct. So undoubtedly, once your stomach has items of food that don't spike your glucose readily... they all will put your glucose up, but anything with protein, anything with fat, anything with fibre, slows down the release of sugars. Even in a potato, if you ate a boiled potato, your blood sugar levels would go up, a spike. If you had a roast potato, so in other words, a potato that's been sympathetically exposed to hot fat, which no one would claim is healthier for you, your blood sugar levels are not going to spike. And the reason for that is because the fat within the potatoes prevents or slows down the release of sugar.