It’s not just another woo-woo wellness claim; it’s actually supported by science.
When you sit down to dig into a meal, you probably don’t think too much about what you’ll eat first. Maybe you fill up on bulky bases like rice or pasta if you’re particularly hungry, tear through the veggies so you’re free to focus on more appealing parts of your plate, or just go straight for your favorite meat main.
No matter which route you take, you may figure the exact order doesn’t matter much: If you’re planning to eat everything, it shouldn’t make a difference if one particular item comes sooner rather than later—right? Well, not exactly. While following a balanced diet is by far the best thing you can do for your health from a dietary standpoint, the order in which you eat your food has more of an impact than you might assume. “When you have your food in a specific order, your body processes it differently,” Jessie Inchauspé, MSc, better known as the Instagram-famous @GlucoseGoddess, tells SELF. That’s not just another woo-woo wellness claim; it’s actually supported by science. Research shows “that food order can contribute to positive health outcomes,” Siera Holley, MS, RDN, an outpatient dietitian at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, says . The practice even has an official name: “meal sequencing.” To answer the original question we posed: Yes, there are certain foods you should eat first. But there are also ones you should eat last. Keep reading to find out how exactly you should be triaging your food intake for best results—and how this practice can boost your health. How does meal sequencing work? In a nutshell, meal sequencing benefits your glucose, or blood sugar, levels by preventing your blood glucose from surging after you eat. Studies show that meal sequencing can reduce the glucose spike caused by a meal by more than 70%, Inchauspé says—a big deal, because a steep glucose spike is “quite detrimental.” For a long time, scientists believed that glucose spikes were only a concern for people who had trouble controlling their blood sugar naturally, like those with diabetes, but more recent research suggests the spikes can have harmful effects even in those who don’t, according to Inchauspé. In light of all this, meal sequencing “is a very easy tool to help your body and your mind thrive without needing to change anything drastic about how much you're eating or what you're eating,” Inchauspé says. She adds that it’s an “efficient, powerful” strategy “that I feel like everybody needs to be aware of.” People who have prediabetes or diabetes tend to be especially well-positioned to benefit from meal sequencing, according to Holley . But the practice has started to seep into the general population as people become more aware of health risks stemming from frequent glucose spikes . If you’re planning to incorporate meal sequencing into your routine, consider working with a registered dietitian to help ensure you’re meeting your “individual nutrition needs” along the way, Holley says. How can meal sequencing benefit your health? Honestly, where do we even start? “Glucose matters for so many factors,” Inchauspé says—from metabolic health, to energy levels, to food cravings, according to Holley. Here are a few examples: Stabilized blood glucose: For obvious reasons, this is one of the biggest benefits of meal sequencing because it prevents the dramatic upswings that could happen otherwise. If you have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, “using the food order hack every day can significantly help you reduce your fasting glucose level and get your glucose spikes under control”—and potentially even reverse the condition, Inchauspé says. If you don’t have prediabetes or diabetes, meal sequencing can help reduce your risk because frequent glucose spikes can also be a major factor in the onset of the condition. “The more glucose spikes you have over time, the higher the risk of pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes,” Inchauspé says. Increased satisfaction after eating: What goes up must come down, so glucose spikes are often followed by an energy crash as well as sugar cravings that compound the effect in a vicious cycle. With meal sequencing, “you can see significant improvement in cravings, in the feeling of food coma after a meal, and in overall energy levels,” Inchauspé says. Smoother shut-eye: “By reducing your glucose spike at dinner, you encourage your body to have more restful, deep sleep,” Inchauspé says. In fact, sleep disturbances are a common complaint among people with diabetes: You might feel too warm, find it tough to settle, or have to wake up to pee since high blood glucose can increase your need to urinate. Reduced disease risk: This is the biggie. Over time, frequent glucose spikes can trigger harmful processes like inflammation, glycation , and insulin resistance , all of which can act as precursors to serious health conditions. We already mentioned type 2 diabetes, but cardiovascular disease and cancer have been implicated as well. Inflammation “can show up as acne, rosacea, and flareups of autoimmune diseases,” Inchauspé says, listing a few further examples. Glycation is famous for accelerating aging in the skin, so you can expect “more brittle collagen” and “wrinkles that appear faster.” Finally, insulin resistance is often linked to polycystic ovary syndrome —an increasingly common diagnosis in women. What sequence should you follow—and why? Without further ado, here are the deets. “The whole science behind this has to do with the way in which food moves from your stomach to your intestine,” Inchauspé says. Specifically, “fiber, protein, and healthy fat are digested slower than foods with higher carbohydrate content,” according to Holley. Here’s the full breakdown: Make fiber the first order of business. You can most famously find fiber in cruciferous vegetables like kale, cabbage, collard greens, broccoli, cauliflower, and bok choy. . “When you eat the fiber at the beginning of the meal, it has time to create a protective mesh that's going to coat your upper intestine and slow down how quickly any nutrients are then going to arrive into your bloodstream,” Inchauspé says. In turn, the glucose in any subsequently consumed carbs “will arrive more slowly because it has this mesh it has to go through,” dampening the resulting spike. Beginning with fiber also means you’ll likely eat more of it than you would otherwise—an important point, since around 95% of Americans are actually deficient in this critical carb. Because of this, “it helps with meeting the daily recommendation for fiber intake, which many of us tend to fall short of,” Holley says. Eating more fiber can additionally make it easier to maintain a healthy weight. “Higher-fiber foods tend to be lower in calories,” Holley explains —so when you load up on them early on, you’re likely to eat less of the higher-calorie foods coming down the line, making for a lower total calorie intake. Next, turn to protein and healthy fats. Protein is plentiful in meat, poultry, eggs, dairy, and seafood , while healthy fats can be found in nuts, seeds, avocados, vegetable oil, and fatty fish like salmon and mackerel. Both “are effective at stimulating the release of GLP-1, a hormone that helps to regulate appetite and blood sugar” , Holley says. Subsequently, that GLP-1 surge delays something called gastric emptying—“how quickly food moves from stomach to intestine,” according to Inchauspé. In practice, this effectively reduces the rate at which food is digested and, in turn, the rate at which glucose hits your bloodstream, resulting in a more gradual rise . Finally, finish with carbs. Once you’ve polished off everything else, it’s time for carbs like rice, bread, and pasta, as well as those starchy veggies we mentioned above. By the time you reach this portion of the meal, there are “all these buffers in place to reduce the speed at which they arrive into the bloodstream. And that's what we want,” Inchauspé says. Using chocolate cake as an example, she explains, “we'll get all the joy from it, just as much as we did before, but on the inside, in terms of what happens in our intestine, things will be slowed down significantly.” Ta-da—“a smaller glucose spike and fewer consequences of the glucose spike on brain and body.” Need a real-world example of how to apply meal sequencing? Say you have a meal consisting of chicken breast, boiled potatoes, and Brussels sprouts sitting in front of you. Go for the Brussels sprouts first, then the chicken breast, and last but not least, the boiled potatoes. To be clear, we don't think you need to do this all of the time—it shouldn’t “become a super stressful additional rule,” Inchauspé says—but if you did want to try it, this is what it would look like. While meal sequencing could be a regular part of your mealtime routine, even a one-off instance can have a positive impact—remember what we said about increased satisfaction? You might notice that you “feel more energized and have fewer cravings for the rest of the day,” Inchauspé says. Besides, it’s sometimes not even possible to meal sequence effectively depending on the format of your meal. Take something like a sandwich, chicken salad, or burrito bowl. Because the different elements—fiber, protein, healthy fats, and carbs—are all mixed together, trying to separate out the individual components would be “such an ordeal,” Inchauspé says. If that’s the case, don’t worry about trying to force it. “Don't think of meal sequencing as a diet,” Inchauspé says. “Think of this as a nice little habit, like brushing your teeth or wearing sunscreen, that you do when it's easy, when you remember to do it, and when you want to do it”—not when it’s difficult or inconvenient. Related: How Your Notes App Can Help You Keep Your Blood Sugar in Check How to Talk to Friends and Family About Your Type 2 Diabetes Diagnosis Do You Really Need to Care About Your Daily Sugar Intake? Get more of SELF’s great service journalism delivered right to your inbox.
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