Most people think healthy soup is synonymous with "good for blood sugar", but in fact not all soups are like that.
The important thing is the type of carbohydrate and the processing method. Soups with high starch content (such as cassava flour, mashed potatoes, MSG, instant noodles, shredded rice), or using sweet or thick broth with high sugar and salt, are usually easier to digest - causing glucose to "flut" into the blood immediately after eating.
Studies show that foods with a high GI index are digested faster and cause a stronger increase in blood sugar than foods with a low GI.
GI is a measure of the ability of carbohydrates in food to increase blood sugar; the higher it is, the faster blood sugar increases.
A typical example is soup with ingredients such as shredded rice, flour, vermicelli or rice flour.
Although often considered "gentle", these ingredients are refined carbohydrates, lose a lot of fiber, are easily digested quickly and are absorbed into the blood as glucose in a short time.
According to research on foods with high GI, refined starches such as white rice, white bread... are likely to cause blood sugar to rise faster than unprocessed carbohydrate sources.
In soup, when crushed rice or flour are completely dissolved in the broth and cooked too soft, the starch structure is even more susceptible to hydrolysis, meaning that digestive enzymes in the small intestine can "treat" them almost immediately.
This causes blood sugar to spike after eating, creating a rapid insulin reaction and leading to unwanted fluctuations in the next 2-3 hours.
If the soup has added broth from bones or meat with high sugar or protein, along with rice, vermicelli or noodles, the total amount of carbohydrates will be very large, leading to faster and stronger blood sugar spikes.
People with type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, insulin resistance, obesity or who are monitoring blood sugar need to pay special attention to soups containing a lot of refined carbohydrates.
People who eat this soup when hungry or eat too much at once often experience high post-eating blood sugar, which can cause fatigue, thirst, and ultimately affect health if repeated regularly.
