Food Order Matters: Why Should You Eat Protein First?
From the very first bite of a meal, your body begins the long process of digestion. It begins in your mouth, where chewing starts the breakdown of food into smaller and smaller particles. Eventually, those particles are small enough that the nutrients within can be absorbed by your stomach and intestines and what’s left is excreted as waste.
Throughout this process, your body is responding to food by releasing hormones of its own. Your body reacts to what you eat by gaining or losing energy, bloating or building muscle, among other things.
We know that certain foods react differently in your body. For example, carbs spike your energy and are digested quickly while protein and fats take longer to process. But does the order you eat these macronutrients in make a difference?
It turns out that yes, it does! A 2015 study published in Diabetes Care showed that eating the protein and fat on your plate before reaching for the carbs actually led to lower blood sugar, the secretion of GLP-1, and even weight loss. This is particularly helpful for people with diabetes, although you don’t have to be diabetic to see benefits from the practice.
Interested? Read on to learn how the order you eat the food on your plate actually has a big impact on how your body responds to and digests the food you consume.
How Blood Sugar Works
When you consume certain foods like carbohydrates, your body digests them into simple sugars which are absorbed into your blood stream. Simple carbs and sugars are more readily absorbed while more complex carbs take longer to be absorbed.
Your pancreas releases insulin in response to a spike in blood sugar. Insulin helps to carry sugar into your blood to be absorbed by your cells and used for energy.
When your blood sugar spikes too high, it is known as hyperglycemia. This condition can impact anyone but is particularly problematic for people with diabetes.
Carbohydrates are a necessary and important part of a balanced diet and are the body’s main source of energy. However, big spikes in insulin can have detrimental effects on your body over time.
When insulin spikes, you might experience increased hunger and especially cravings for sugar. Additionally, insulin spikes can lead to feelings of depression, anxiety, and can lower your energy.
Your body is also likely to experience a big crash after an insulin spike, when your blood sugar level drops even further than it was before you ate. Symptoms of a crash include sweating, shakiness, dizziness, confusion, and even loss of consciousness.
Frequent insulin spikes can lead to long term damage to blood vessels, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and more.
Carbs Effect Diabetics Differently
Anyone can experience hyperglycemia or insulin spikes and crashes, but diabetics are particularly at risk when it comes to the detrimental effects of eating too many carbohydrates.
People with diabetes have issues with insulin response, making it harder for the body to process extra sugar in the bloodstream. Because a diabetic’s body doesn’t readily produce the insulin that regulates blood sugar, they have to take insulin to keep their blood sugar stable.
Blood sugar spikes in diabetics not only lead to hyperglycemia, but can also cause ketoacidosis, an acute condition that can be life threatening.
Ketoacidosis occurs when the body begins breaking down fats too quickly, acidifying the blood. Symptoms include frequent urination, extreme thirst, vomiting, abdominal pain, and confusion.
In the past, doctors recommended that diabetics cut out or drastically reduce the amount of carbs they consumed. However, as anyone who has dieted can probably attest, eliminating a food group can be difficult for people to achieve.
Luckily, studies have recognized that there is another way to control blood sugar which has additional benefits to the body that may help people to lose weight.
Does the Order You Eat Your Food Really Matter?
So what does all of this have to do with the order in which you eat your food? Well, it turns out that whether you dive straight into the steak or if you reach for the potatoes first can have a big impact on the way your body responds to a meal.
According to a 2015 study by Cornell Medical College researchers, eating protein and veggies before carbohydrates actually leads to lower blood sugar and insulin post-meal.
Researchers tested the glucose levels of 15 diabetic participants 30, 60, and 120 minutes after a meal, first where the carbs were consumed alongside protein and veggies, and second where carbs were consumed last.
They found that when protein and vegetables were eaten first, blood sugar was 29%, 37%, and 17% lower at each respective time interval. Insulin levels were also lower in each instance.
Added Benefits of Saving the Carbs for Last
It turns out that your blood sugar isn’t the only thing impacted when you consume protein before carbs. Further research found that consuming the protein and fat on your plate first promotes the secretion of glucagon-like peptide-1, or GLP-1.
This term is probably familiar to you in the form of GLP-1 medications sold under the brand names Ozempic, Mounjaro, or Wegovy, which mimic a hormone naturally secreted by your body after eating.
GLP-1 secretion effects you by slowing stomach emptying. This not only slows down the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream, but also suppresses your appetite by causing you to feel full longer.
GLP-1 has additional benefits including protecting the heart, kidney, and nervous system. These effects can help prevent or lessen some of the diabetes related health complications we discussed earlier.
Potential Drawbacks
Although eating protein and fat first can help to stimulate appetite suppressing GLP-1, a diet too high in saturated fat can increase another hormone, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP). This mouthful of a name refers to a hormone which promotes the storage of energy in adipose tissue and can eventually lead to weight gain.
While fat is definitely an important part of a balanced diet, it is generally good practice to reduce the amount of saturated fats in your diet anyway by sticking to lean meats and fish and not over consuming dairy, eggs, and other fatty foods.
For more on dietary fat and how much you should be eating, check out this post.
Forget Elimination, Just Change Your Meal Sequence
The good news is that experts have found a way to control blood sugar and stimulate weight loss that doesn’t involve eliminating or restricting food intake. It has been long known in the diet industry that overly restrictive diets are hard to follow and usually fail.
Instead, changing up the order of eating is not only easier to follow than restriction or elimination, but it can have the same benefits to your body and weight by controlling blood sugar and facilitating GLP-1 secretion.
Adopting this into your own life is relatively easy. When you build your plate, prioritize protein and vegetables, but don’t shy away from the carbohydrates. When you eat, finish the protein and veggies before moving on to enjoy the carbs.
An added benefit is that when also practice mindful eating, you will fill up on the more nutritionally dense parts of your meal and naturally consume less of the simple carbs.
Obviously, this practice is harder to do if you are eating a meal which is already mixed such as soup, a burrito, or a rice bowl. Don’t be afraid to enjoy these meals as well. You may not be able to get it perfect every time, but that doesn’t mean you won’t benefit from practicing this way of eating when it works for you.
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