Issue No. 034 · Cinnamon

Cinnamon cut my spike by 30%

But only at the right dose, and only from the right jar.

I love rice pudding.

My grandmother made it every Sunday. I stopped eating it the year a doctor handed me a pamphlet that said to avoid desserts. That pamphlet never mentioned cinnamon.

So last Saturday I ran a test. I ate one bowl of rice pudding on an empty stomach and watched my glucose monitor for two hours. Three days later, I ate the same bowl at the same hour with two teaspoons of Ceylon cinnamon stirred in.

The plain bowl of rice pudding raised my blood sugar 54 points. With cinnamon, the same bowl raised it 38.

That’s a 30% smaller spike from a spice already sitting in my kitchen.

And I didn’t give up the pudding to get it.

Rice pudding alone

   
+54

Rice pudding + 2 tsp Ceylon cinnamon

   
+38

Rise in blood sugar (mg/dL) over two hours. Same bowl, same hour, empty stomach both times.

My personal CGM readings: one person, two tests. Your results may differ. This is not medical advice. Talk to your doctor before making changes, especially if you take glucose-lowering medication.
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Plain pudding

+54

mg/dL rise

−30%

Smaller spike

🥄

With cinnamon

+38

mg/dL rise

Here’s what happened inside me… and it starts in the stomach.

Cinnamon may slow how fast the stomach empties food into the gut. In a 2007 Swedish study, 14 healthy adults ate 300 grams of rice pudding with and without 6 grams of cinnamon. The cinnamon bowls emptied slower and caused a smaller blood sugar rise.

In other words, the sugar from that rice pudding still arrives. It just arrives over a longer stretch, so my body has more time to deal with it.

By the way, a 2024 UCLA trial in adults with prediabetes found that 4 grams of cinnamon a day lowered glucose on a continuous monitor compared with a placebo.

But there’s fine print nobody puts on the jar.

Dose matters. When the same Swedish team tested 1 gram and 3 grams, blood sugar didn’t change in any meaningful way. A pinch on your latte is flavor, not a hack.

So I matched the study dose as close as I could, about two teaspoons.

And the jar matters too. Most supermarket cinnamon is cassia, which contains a compound called coumarin. European food safety experts set the daily limit at 0.1 mg of coumarin per kilo of body weight, and a single teaspoon of cassia can go past that.

That’s why I bought Ceylon. Ceylon carries a tiny fraction of the coumarin, so a dessert-sized dose is a far safer bet.

One caveat… this was one body and two bowls. Your number may come out bigger, smaller, or flat. Bodies differ, and a spice is no substitute for medicine your doctor prescribed.

The spice works when the dose is right.

⚡ Your mission this week

Spice the bowl

⏱ 2 minutes

1

Check the jar

Look for the word Ceylon on the label. If it just says cinnamon, assume it’s cassia and keep it to a light sprinkle.
 
2

Stir in a real dose

Mix about two teaspoons of Ceylon into one carb-heavy bowl, like rice pudding, baked apples, or oatmeal.
 
3

Keep it a treat

Save the big dose for a couple of bowls a week. Check with your doctor first if you take diabetes medication or have liver issues.

🎯 Your first win

Find a jar of Ceylon this weekend and stir it into one dessert you were told to give up.

Do

Use Ceylon when you want a dose big enough to matter.

Stir it into the food itself so it goes down with the carbs.

  

Don’t

Pile teaspoons of cassia onto everything, every day.

Count on a sprinkle over your latte to change your numbers.

My friend Renata tried this after I showed her my numbers. Her first attempt was a quarter teaspoon on toast, and her monitor didn’t budge.

So she went bigger. On Sunday she baked apples with two teaspoons of Ceylon and watched her curve rise slower and stop lower than her usual baked-apple bump. She texted me one line… “I get to keep dessert.”

That’s the whole point of this revolution.
🔬 Where this comes from: Hlebowicz et al., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2007): 6 g of cinnamon added to 300 g of rice pudding delayed gastric emptying and lowered the post-meal glucose response in 14 healthy adults. The same group (2009) found no significant glucose change at 1 g or 3 g. A 2024 UCLA trial in adults with prediabetes reported lower CGM glucose with 4 g of cinnamon daily versus placebo. Coumarin limit (0.1 mg/kg body weight per day) from the European Food Safety Authority. Jackie’s numbers (+54 plain, +38 with cinnamon) are her own CGM readings, one person, one test each.

They told me to quit dessert.
Nobody mentioned the spice rack.

Guess the Spike

How high did plain rice pudding spike me?

›+20 to +35 ›+36 to +50 ›+51 to +65 ›+66 or more

★ Welcome to the revolution

Jackie

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