General Tso's chicken with fried rice

General Tso's chicken with fried rice is third in the index: two cups of rice, a sweet glaze and battered chicken, about 120 g of carbs.

Digestible carbs

119 g

GI

71

Glycemic load

85

In cans of cola

3.8

Takeout Chinese stacks three fast carbs: the batter on the chicken, a sweet glaze (the index counts 2 tablespoons of sugar for it) and a big box of rice. An instant fried rice tested at a GI of 80 in China, higher than plain boiled rice at 73.

Beef and broccoli with a cup and a half of rice carries a little over half this load, and the same dish without the rice almost none.

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.

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.

• White rice x 2: 88.8 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.
• Sugar, 1 tsp x 6: 24 g digestible carbs from USDA Nutritive Value of Foods, item 1025, p. 74: Granulated, 1 tsp (4 g). GI 65, Atkinson 2008 Table 1, Sucrose.
• White bread, 1 slice x 0.5: 5.7 g digestible carbs from USDA Nutritive Value of Foods, item 415, p. 38: Untoasted, 1 slice (25 g). GI 75, Atkinson 2008 Table 1, White wheat bread.
• Also on the plate, with little or no digestible carbs: battered chicken; sweet sauce 2 tbsp sugar.

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