The Vegetables First: Why the Order of the Plate Changes Everything for Your Glucose

I say to you a thing which, until some years ago, I did not know neither. We have always been told what to eat. The mother says: “Eat the vegetables, which they make you good.” The doctor says: “Reduce the sugars.” But nobody, and I say nobody, has explained to us in which order to put the food in the plate. And this, I have discovered, is the thing which counts the most.

The principle is simple: you start the meal from the vegetables, then you pass to the proteins and the fats, and only at the end you eat the bread, the pasta, the rice. In Italy, we call this “the order of the plate.” In the scientific language, they say “meal sequencing.” But the concept, I explain it to you as if you had ten years.

What Happens Inside You When You Eat

I make you a image. Imagine your stomach as a little kitchen. The glucose is the sugar which arrives from the food. When you eat a plate of pasta without nothing before, this sugar arrives in the blood like a wave. Fast. Strong. And the pancreas, which is the organ that must manage the sugar, goes in panic. It produces too much insulin. And after two hours, you are again hungry, tired, and you want a biscotto.

Now, I say to you the trick. If before the pasta you eat a good portion of cooked vegetables — the courgettes, the spinach, the broccoli — you create in the intestine a kind of net. This net is made of fibre. The fibre slows down the passage of the sugar into the blood. The wave becomes a little stream. Gentle. Constant. The pancreas works calm. And you stay satisfied for hours.

This is not a theory of the internet. This is the mechanism of the digestion, which works in the same way for the child and for the grandfather.

Why the Glucose Matters Also if You Are Not Sick

Many persons think: “The glucose is the problem of who has the diabetes.” And this is an error which I see every day. The truth is that the glucose goes up and down in the blood of all persons, every day, after every meal. The problem is when these ups and downs are too strong, too frequent.

The signs of a glucose which jumps too much are these:

• After one hour from the meal, you feel a heaviness and you want to sleep
• In the middle of the afternoon, you have a hunger which is not hunger, it is a nervousness in the stomach
• You eat, and after little time you want something sweet
• The energy goes up and down like a yo-yo during the day
• You feel the fog in the head, as if you did not sleep well

These are not small things. They are the signals that the body sends you. And the beautiful thing is that with the order of the plate, you can answer to these signals without medicines, without complicated things. You change only the sequence. Nothing else.

How to Do It in Practice: The Steps of the Plate

I explain to you now the method, step by step, as my grandmother would have explained it. You need not to weigh the food. You need not to count the calories. You must only follow the order.

The first step: the vegetables.
You start with a portion of vegetables. Cooked or raw, it does not matter much. A plate of green beans with oil, a salad with tomato, a soup of courgettes. The important thing is that there is the fibre. You eat this first, slowly, chewing well. Five, seven minutes. This is the foundation.

The second step: the proteins and the good fats.
Now you pass to the fish, the eggs, the chicken, the legumes. Or a piece of cheese, some olives, a little avocado. The proteins and the fats slow down further the digestion. They say to the stomach: “Calm, we take our time.”

The third step: the carbohydrates.
Only now you eat the pasta, the bread, the rice, the potato. And you will notice a thing: you are already a little satisfied. You eat less. And the sugar from these foods arrives in the blood slowly, because the fibre and the proteins have prepared the road.

The fourth step, if you want: the sweet.
If you desire a fruit or a little piece of chocolate, you eat it at the end, never on the empty stomach. Never alone as a snack at ten in the morning. Always after the meal, as a closure.

The Role of the Fibre and the Help Which Comes from the Nature

The fibre is the protagonist of this story. It is the substance which is inside the vegetables, the legumes, the whole cereals. Our body does not digest it completely, and this is its force. It passes through the intestine, absorbs a part of the sugar, and makes everything slower.

But I tell you the truth, as a friend. In the modern life, we eat less fibre than our grandparents. The bread is white, the vegetables are few, the time to cook is little. And for some persons, the glucose still makes the jump also with the plate in order, because the metabolism is a bit tired, a bit stressed from the years.

In these cases, I have seen that a support from the outside can help. For example, I have read about Glycorium, which is a natural integrator thought exactly for who wants to maintain the levels of glucose in balance, together with a good alimentation. It is not a medicine. It is a support. Like the fibre supports the intestine, this type of support gives a hand to the mechanism of the sugar. I have found the information on glycorium.biz, where they explain well the composition and for whom it is indicated. I say this not because I must, but because I think that the information, when it is useful, must be shared. Naturally, you speak always with your doctor before, as you would do for any change.

The Errors Which Cancel the Good Work

I see often persons who say: “I have started to eat the vegetables first, but nothing changes.” And then I ask them how they do, and I discover the errors. I list them to you, so you do not make them:

• You eat the vegetables, but then you eat the pasta in a giant portion. The order helps, but if the quantity of carbohydrates is enormous, the sugar arrives anyway. A normal portion. Eighty grams of pasta. Not two hundred.
• You drink the sugared drinks during the meal. The juice of fruit, the cola. These are liquid sugar which bypass the fibre. Water, only water. Or a little wine, if you want.
• You eat the fruit alone, far from the meals. An apple at ten in the morning, on the empty stomach, is a spike of sugar. The fruit goes after the meal, always.
• You eat too fast. If you finish the plate in four minutes, the body does not have the time to register the sequence. Chew. Put down the fork between one bite and the other. Speak. The meal in Italy is a social moment. It must last at least twenty minutes.

A Small Table to Remember the Order

I leave you a scheme which you can also attach on the fridge. Simple, like I would do for my children.

The Final Word, From Me to You

I do not want to complicate your life. I want to simplify it. The beauty of the order of the plate is that you must buy nothing new. You must not install an application. You must not count nothing. You have the same food which you had yesterday. You change only the sequence. And the body, which is an intelligent machine, thanks you.

Start tomorrow. At lunch, before the pasta, eat a plate of green beans with a drop of oil and a pinch of salt. Chew slowly. Then the rest. And see how you feel after two hours. If you feel light, present, without the desire to sleep on the divano — then you have understood. The glucose is calm. And when the glucose is calm, all the rest follows.

This is the wisdom of the plate. It is not new. Our grandmothers knew it, in a way. They did not call it “glucose curve.” They called it “eating with the head.” And they were right.

Eat with the head. Start from the green. The rest comes after.