Issue No. 026 · Sushi

Sushi Goes on Trial. +48 Points.

Your “healthy” dinner pick has a glycemic index of 85. That’s higher than a Snickers bar.

I trusted sushi. Every Friday I walked into the same restaurant and ordered the same California roll because I thought I was making the smart choice. Fish is protein. Seaweed is a vegetable. Avocado is a healthy fat. That is the story... every health article sold me.

+48

mg/dL rise · one California roll

Then I wore a glucose monitor for a week.

One California roll raised my blood sugar... 48 points. That is not the fish doing that. Fish has a glycemic index of zero. It is not the seaweed or the avocado. It is the rice underneath, the part nobody warns you about.

Sushi rice has a glycemic index of 85. A Snickers bar scores 51. In other words, the rice under your salmon ranks 34 points higher than a candy bar on the glycemic index. My doctor never mentioned that.

Here is why. Sushi rice is short-grain white rice mixed with sugar and rice vinegar. The vinegar gives it that tang you love, but the sugar is what your blood sees. One cup of sushi rice has about 2 grams of added sugar on top of 33 grams of fast-acting starch. And rice makes up roughly 60% of a sushi roll by weight. So when you think you are eating fish, you are mostly eating sweetened white rice with a thin strip of salmon on top.

Blood sugar responses are personal. Your numbers may differ. This is not medical advice.

Cooling does not help here. Sushi rice never drops cold enough to form the resistant starch that makes day-old pasta or chilled potatoes gentler on your blood sugar. The sticky texture that holds your roll together is the same starch structure that sends your glucose up fast. You cannot hack sushi rice by chilling it. It is already cold and it still hits hard.

I used to think sushi was my safe night out. No bread, no fries, no pasta. Just fish and rice. But 83% of sushi rice meals in a dataset of 443 CGM logs crossed the +30 mg/dL spike threshold. That is the highest spike rate of any rice type in the database.

Meanwhile... The Hack

So I ran the test again. This time I ate my edamame first. I waited about ten minutes. Then I ate the same California roll from the same restaurant.

The spike dropped to +29.

That is a 40% reduction from one change. I did not swap the rice. I did not skip the roll. I ate the exact same meal... I just ate protein and fiber before I ate the starch.

The science backs this up. A 2024 systematic review found that eating protein or vegetables before carbs may reduce the glucose response by up to 40% in healthy adults. Protein triggers a hormone called GLP-1 that slows your stomach from emptying too fast. In other words, the edamame told your gut to take its time, so the rice entered your bloodstream in a trickle instead of a flood.

Nobody told me to give up sushi. I just needed to eat the edamame first.

★ Welcome to the revolution

Jackie