Lentil soup
Lentil soup is one of the steadiest meals in the index. Lentils score 32 on the GI scale, so a big bowl makes a small hill.
- Digestible carbs
- 22 g
- GI
- 32
- Glycemic load
- 7
- In cans of cola
- 0.3
Lentils are one of the lowest foods in the international tables, a GI of 32. A bowl and a half of lentil soup has about 22 g of available carbs.
Add a slice of whole wheat bread and the load roughly doubles, and it still sits in the steady list.
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.
- Lentil soup peaks near 96 mg/dL (5.3 mmol/L) at 40 minutes and is 91 at two hours.
- Lentil soup with a slice of bread peaks near 100 mg/dL (5.6 mmol/L) at 50 minutes and is 94 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.
- 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 from the food tested on its own.
- Lentil soup, 1 cup x 1.5: 21.6 g digestible carbs from USDA Nutritive Value of Foods, item 923, p. 68: Lentil, 1 cup (242 g). GI 32, Atkinson 2008 Table 1, Lentils.
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
6 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
- 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
