Pad thai
Pad thai is two cups of rice noodles in a sweet sauce, about 88 g of carbs. Rice noodles score 53, and the sugar in the sauce adds to it.
- Digestible carbs
- 88 g
- GI
- 55
- Glycemic load
- 48
- In cans of cola
- 2.2
A takeout pad thai is mostly noodles. Rice noodles score in the middle of the GI table, 53, and the index counts a tablespoon of sugar for the sauce.
Extra shrimp and vegetables with half the noodles is the easy swap. A green curry over jasmine rice is no better: jasmine tested between 68 and 88 in different studies.
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.
- Pad thai peaks near 122 mg/dL (6.8 mmol/L) at 50 minutes and is 103 at two hours.
- Thai green curry with jasmine rice peaks near 125 mg/dL (6.9 mmol/L) at 50 minutes and is 105 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, carbs from egg noodles.
- Rice noodles x 2: 76.4 g digestible carbs from USDA Nutritive Value of Foods, item 598, p. 48: Regular, 1 cup (160 g). GI 53, Atkinson 2008 Table 1, Rice noodles.
- Sugar, 1 tsp x 3: 12 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.
- Also on the plate, with little or no digestible carbs: shrimp, egg, peanuts; sauce 1 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
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
- Kataoka, M., et al., Glycaemic responses to glucose and rice in people of Chinese and European ethnicity. Diabetic Medicine: a Journal of the British Diabetic Association, 2013. 30(3): p. e101-7, 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
