Large chicken burrito with rice and beans
A large chicken burrito with rice and beans is about 110 g of carbs: a big tortilla and a cup of white rice. The same bowl without rice is a fraction.
- Digestible carbs
- 110 g
- GI
- 47 (est.)
- Glycemic load
- 51
- In cans of cola
- 2.3
A burrito-shop burrito wraps a cup of white rice, beans and meat in a big tortilla, which the index counts as three small ones. Flour tortillas tested low in Mexico, a GI of 30, but the rice is fast and the total is large.
The same fillings in a bowl with no rice and no tortilla keep the beans, the protein and the fat, and drop the load by more than nine tenths.
What the hill looks like
Here's the meal next to its swap in our teaching model, drawn for a healthy adult from published averages. Your own curve will differ, but the gap between the two is the point.
- Large chicken burrito with rice and beans peaks near 124 mg/dL (6.9 mmol/L) at 50 minutes and is 104 at two hours.
- Burrito bowl, beans and fajita vegetables, no rice peaks near 92 mg/dL (5.1 mmol/L) at 50 minutes and is 91 at two hours.
A teaching model built from published averages for a healthy adult, not a prediction for you. People eating the same meal can differ a lot. How the model works
What would flatten it
- Make it smaller. Half the starch is half the load, since the load is carbs times GI.
- Walk for 10 minutes after. In 41 adults with type 2 diabetes, 10-minute walks after each meal made the rise 12% smaller than one daily walk, and 22% smaller after dinner.
- Eat the protein and vegetables first. The same meal with the carbs 10 minutes later lowered the peak by more than 40% in 15 people with prediabetes.
- Swap the drink. Any sweet drink on the side adds its whole load, and water adds none.
Run this meal in the simulator, switch on a walk or carbs last, and watch where the sugar goes.
What the numbers rest on
GI worked out from its parts, a GI estimated from a similar food.
- Flour tortilla, 6 inch x 3: 50.7 g digestible carbs from USDA Nutritive Value of Foods, item 661, p. 52: Flour, 1 tortilla (32 g). GI 30, Sydney GI database, Wheat tortilla (Mexico 1999).
- White rice: 44.4 g digestible carbs from USDA Nutritive Value of Foods, item 636, p. 50: Cooked, 1 cup (158 g). GI 73, Atkinson 2008 Table 1, White rice, boiled.
- Pinto beans x 0.5: 14.7 g digestible carbs from USDA Nutritive Value of Foods, item 679, p. 52: Pinto, 1 cup (171 g). GI 24, Atkinson 2008 Table 1, Kidney beans: stands in, the GI of kidney beans used for pinto beans.
- Also on the plate, with little or no digestible carbs: chicken, cheese, salsa.
This is about blood sugar for people without diabetes. If you take insulin or a sulfonylurea, your targets and meal plan come from your prescriber.
The 100 meals that raise blood sugar most · The 100 that keep it steady
7 sources
- US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Nutritive Value of Foods, Home and Garden Bulletin 72, 2002ars.usda.gov
- Atkinson FS, Foster-Powell K and Brand-Miller JC, International tables of glycemic index and glycemic load values, Diabetes Care, 2008pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- University of Sydney, Glycemic Index Research and GI Database, accessed November 15, 2026glycemicindex.com
- Noriega, E., L. Rivera, and E. Peralta, Glycaemic and insulinaemic indices of Mexican foods high in complex carbohydrates. Diabetes, Nutrition & Metabolism, 2000. 13(1): p. 13-9, via the University of Sydney GI databaseglycemicindex.com
- Reynolds AN and others, Advice to walk after meals is more effective for lowering postprandial glycaemia in type 2 diabetes than advice that does not specify timing, Diabetologia, 2016pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Shukla AP and others, The impact of food order on postprandial glycaemic excursions in prediabetes, Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 2019pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Hutchins KM and others, Continuous glucose monitor overestimates glycemia, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2025pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
