Hi Reader
Years ago, when I was trying to work this out for myself, I ran a fairly unscientific experiment on my own meals. One night: a bowl of plain jasmine rice, nothing much else. Another night: much the same rice, but alongside grilled salmon, a soft-boiled egg, and a big pile of greens wilted in sesame oil. I didn’t have a glucose monitor back then, but the difference in how I felt afterwards — steady versus jittery within a couple of hours — told me everything I needed to know.
The rice hadn’t changed. What was sitting next to it had.
That’s really what “metabolic health” means, underneath the clinical-sounding name. It’s how smoothly your body handles the food you give it — how steady your blood sugar and insulin stay through the day, rather than spiking and crashing. That kitchen-table experiment is still the thing I come back to, years on, with almost every client.
What’s actually happening on the plate
Eaten on its own, something that breaks down into sugar quickly — plain rice, white bread, juice — sends blood glucose up fast. Insulin brings it back down, and if it comes down too fast, you’re left running on empty again within an hour or two. That’s the shaky, snacky feeling so many people describe.
Fibre, protein and fat all slow that process down. They don’t stop the sugar from arriving — they change its pace. The salmon, egg and greens on that plate weren’t there to “cancel out” the rice; they were there to slow it down.
“But isn’t rice just rice?” is the question I get asked often in coaching sessions. The honest answer is that the rice matters less than what’s sitting next to it. The cook in me and the coach in me agree completely on this one — it’s never really about a single ingredient, it’s about the whole plate.
Why this matters beyond how you feel that afternoon
Research on insulin sensitivity suggests that the steadier your blood sugar tends to stay over time, the better your long-term metabolic health — with associations to energy, weight regulation, and reduced diabetes risk as we age. It’s an association worth taking seriously, even if no single meal decides the outcome.
None of this means avoiding carbohydrates, and it definitely doesn’t mean eating less. It means noticing what tends to sit alongside them — protein, fibre, some fat — and building meals that naturally include a bit of all three.
The rice hadn’t changed. What was sitting next to it had.
Something worth trying this week
Next time you’re putting together a meal that’s carb-heavy on its own — pasta, rice, toast — you might find it useful to ask what else is on the plate. A source of protein, something with fibre, a bit of fat. You don’t need to overhaul the meal, just round it out.
There’s one more piece of this that’s always a favourite with clients: how you cook and store a carbohydrate changes it too. Cook rice, potatoes or pasta, then let them cool — even just to reheat later — and some of that starch converts to resistant starch, which behaves more like fibre in digestion and slows down how quickly it’s absorbed. It means leftover rice or a cold potato salad genuinely isn’t a compromise. If anything, it’s doing some of the work for you — which is exactly the kind of thing that makes this easier to live with, not harder.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing more of what this looks like in practice — including what an actual blood sugar spike feels like, and how the order you eat things in changes the response even when the plate is identical.
Until next time — eat well
Rebecca x
