The meal index · Dinner · Italian

Restaurant plate of spaghetti bolognese

By GyroscopeNumber 42 of 248Updated November 15, 2026

A restaurant plate of spaghetti, counted here as two and a half cups of pasta, carries about 94 g of carbs. Pasta is low GI, 49, but the plate is big.

Digestible carbs

94 g

GI

49

Glycemic load

46

In cans of cola

2.1

Pasta has a low GI for a refined flour, 49 in the international tables. The trouble with a restaurant plate is the size, which the index counts as two and a half cups.

A cup and a half of whole wheat pasta with olive oil and vegetables carries less than half the load.

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 from the food tested on its own.

• Spaghetti x 2.5: 94 g digestible carbs from USDA Nutritive Value of Foods, item 646, p. 50: Enriched, 1 cup (140 g). GI 49, Atkinson 2008 Table 1, Spaghetti, white.
• Also on the plate, with little or no digestible carbs: meat sauce, Parmesan.

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