A bowl of rice puts more sugar into your blood than most desserts.
Dr. David Unwin breaks down what common starchy foods turn into once they’re digested:
- 150g white rice ≈ 10 teaspoons of sugar
- 150g boiled potato ≈ 9 teaspoons
- 2 thin slices of brown bread ≈ 6 teaspoons
- 1 banana ≈ 6 teaspoons
Then he gives the number that puts the rest in context. Your entire bloodstream, all 5 liters of it, holds about 4 grams of glucose. That’s a single teaspoon.
So one banana delivers six times the glucose your whole bloodstream carries at any moment. In a healthy body, insulin quickly moves the excess into your cells. In an insulin-resistant body, the system gets swamped and blood sugar spikes.
The part worth thinking about is what he says about young people. You can eat this way for years and feel fine, because your pancreas is working overtime to keep up. Feeling fine just means the bill hasn’t come due yet.
Compare that with steak and a big salad, or a three-egg omelette with cheese. Both are nutrient-dense, and both put almost no glucose into your blood.
None of these starchy foods taste sweet, and that’s why the comparison matters.
Starch is made of long chains of glucose, and digestion breaks it down into the same glucose that’s in table sugar. Unwin’s teaspoon figures come from each food’s glycaemic load, which measures how much a normal portion actually raises blood glucose. Each teaspoon equals 4g of sugar.
Mike
Dr. David Unwin breaks down what common starchy foods turn into once they’re digested:
- 150g white rice ≈ 10 teaspoons of sugar
- 150g boiled potato ≈ 9 teaspoons
- 2 thin slices of brown bread ≈ 6 teaspoons
- 1 banana ≈ 6 teaspoons
Then he gives the number that puts the rest in context. Your entire bloodstream, all 5 liters of it, holds about 4 grams of glucose. That’s a single teaspoon.
So one banana delivers six times the glucose your whole bloodstream carries at any moment. In a healthy body, insulin quickly moves the excess into your cells. In an insulin-resistant body, the system gets swamped and blood sugar spikes.
The part worth thinking about is what he says about young people. You can eat this way for years and feel fine, because your pancreas is working overtime to keep up. Feeling fine just means the bill hasn’t come due yet.
Compare that with steak and a big salad, or a three-egg omelette with cheese. Both are nutrient-dense, and both put almost no glucose into your blood.
None of these starchy foods taste sweet, and that’s why the comparison matters.
Starch is made of long chains of glucose, and digestion breaks it down into the same glucose that’s in table sugar. Unwin’s teaspoon figures come from each food’s glycaemic load, which measures how much a normal portion actually raises blood glucose. Each teaspoon equals 4g of sugar.
Mike
