Issue No. 041 · The Bakery Case

The lighter pastry spiked harder

Scone vs. croissant, doughnut vs. pound cake, angel food vs. sponge. The butter wins all three.

I ordered the scone.

It looked like the safe pick next to the shiny croissant, and I felt smug about it for a whole hour.

Then I looked up the lab numbers... and that plain scone scored 92 on the glycemic index.

The butter croissant scored 67.

That 25-point gap stopped me cold at the counter.

My doctor never mentioned that fat can slow a spike. He told me to walk past the bakery case and keep walking. But you can keep the pastry and pick the one that raises your blood sugar more slowly.

Here is how the scoring works. Each food is compared gram for gram of carbs, with pure glucose set at 100. In other words, a higher number means the sugar reaches your blood faster.

So here are three bakery swaps where the richer pick wins.

A plain scone is mostly flour and sugar, so it leaves your stomach fast. The croissant is folded with layer after layer of butter, and that fat slows the trip from your stomach to your gut. That means the same kind of sugar shows up on a slower clock.

Cake doughnuts tested at 76 in the lab. Pound cake tested at 54, and the likely reason is the butter and whole eggs packed into every slice. That is a 22-point gap between two cakes that sit on the same shelf. So the slice that looks heavier is the one your blood sugar handles better.

This one made me angry for you. Angel food cake is the fat-free cake we were told to pick at every birthday party, and it scored 67. Plain sponge cake keeps the egg yolks and scored 46. So fat-free was never the same thing as spike-free.

GI scores are lab averages from small groups, and your own response may differ. This is not medical advice, so check with your doctor before you change a treatment plan.

By the way... these numbers have limits.

Most of them come from small lab tests, and some are decades old. One newer test put an all-butter croissant at 45, while another put a croissant at 67, so the recipe can move the score a lot.

And fat is not a free pass.

In a 1983 study, adding butter to potato lowered the glucose rise, but the insulin response did not shrink with it. That’s why I call these better picks. Nobody should sell you a croissant as health food.

But nobody should shame you for eating one, either.

Meanwhile, the order you eat in still counts. A couple of eggs or a cup of Greek yogurt before the croissant may soften the rise even more. And a ten-minute walk after the pastry may help your muscles pull some of that sugar out of your blood.

Anyway... I went back to that bakery and ordered the croissant with zero guilt. The barista didn’t ask why I was grinning.

Keep the pastry. Pick the richer one.

★ Welcome to the revolution

Jackie