What happens when you eat

Does olive oil lower the blood sugar spike from pasta?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20267 sources

Same pasta, much smaller hill. A cup and a half of whole wheat spaghetti with olive oil, zucchini, tomatoes and spinach carries about 46 grams of digestible carbs, half of a restaurant plate of white spaghetti. The olive oil and vegetables slow the stomach, so what does arrive comes in later and lower. Nothing about the pasta changed except how much of it there is and what’s next to it.

Pasta or no pasta isn’t the choice

People think the choice is pasta or no pasta. The meal index shows a third option. A restaurant plate of spaghetti bolognese carries a glycemic load of about 46. This plate carries about 22. That’s the difference between a meal in the top 50 of 248 and one near the middle, without giving up pasta.

Most of it is the portion. Some of it is the oil and the vegetables, and that part is less obvious.

The trip, stop by stop

The pasta goes the usual way: chewed, mixed in the stomach, cut into glucose in the small intestine. The difference is the stomach. Proteins, fats and fibers all change how fast the stomach empties, and a plate with olive oil and a pile of vegetables leaves more slowly than plain pasta.

You can see fat at work in the GI tables. White bread scores 75. In a 2015 test in Singapore, white bread with olive oil worked into the dough scored 55, and with butter 59. Potatoes show the same thing: boiled potato scores 78, potato chips 56 and french fries 63.

And whole meals do better than their parts. In a study of 30 people, a spaghetti meal with chicken, vegetables and sauce scored 19 points lower on the GI scale when tested whole than its parts predicted.

What the hill looks like

The model draws both plates from their carbs and GI. Whole wheat spaghetti scores 48, white spaghetti 49, so the GI barely differs. The load does: about 46 for two and a half cups of white spaghetti against about 22 for a cup and a half of whole wheat. A 10-minute walk after dinner made the rise 22% smaller in 41 adults with type 2 diabetes.

The model doesn’t count the extra slowing from the oil and vegetables, so the real gap is probably bigger.

Olive oil adds no carbs

The USDA lists a tablespoon of olive oil at about 119 calories and no carbohydrate at all. It won’t raise your blood sugar, and it helps slow the meal. It does add calories, which counts if you’re losing weight, so a tablespoon or two is plenty.

What helps

• Halve the pasta, double the vegetables. The portion does the most.
• Eat the vegetables first. In 15 adults with prediabetes, protein and vegetables first with the carbs 10 minutes later lowered the peak by more than 40%.
• Keep some fat. Olive oil, cheese or a protein on the plate all slow the stomach.
• Walk after dinner. Ten minutes, soon after eating.

The surprising part

Whole wheat pasta barely changes the GI, 48 against 49 for white. Its real advantage is the fiber: a cup of cooked whole wheat spaghetti has 6.3 g against 2.4 g for white, so the same cup carries about 31 g of digestible carbs instead of about 38. Swap the pasta and shrink the pile, and the two small changes add up to half the hill.