Another option is that it's affected by the order of consumption.

I know somebody who got really into blood glucose monitoring, and she tells me that the order in which she eats a meal affects how much it spikes her glucose. So if she eats a piece of toast followed by a piece of cheese, it causes her a bigger glucose spike than she'd get if she eats the cheese first and then the toast.

Looking at the two meals in the study: if I sat down to eat the processed one, I'd probably start with the veggie straws. If I saw down to eat the unprocessed one, I'd almost certainly start with the egg or the cheese.

edit: and here are some other options: I notice that the unprocessed one is grain-free, vegetarian and has significantly less sucrose. I don't know if any of that makes it more or less healthy, but they're significant differences nutritionally.

If you look up how to calculate the glycemic index of a meal, the formula treats each meal component's glycemic index as a proportion of the total meal's glycemic index.

But the above example shows that the body doesn't treat food in that manner - the relatively low carb, higher fat cheese didn't smooth out the higher proportion carb count of the toast.

In the paper, the largest carbs for the ultraprocessed meal was instant mashed potatoes, while the non-processed meal had bananas as the largest carb source followed by craisins/cranberries.

The high carb foods in the unprocessed meal are paired with fiber.

The high carb foods in the ultraprocessed meal are NOT paired with fiber.

The fiber slows the rate of carb intake.

Same thing occurs with protein - same amount of ground beef and steak, ground beef meal will result in faster amino acid ingestion than the steak meal. No idea if there are any pros/cons of the faster ground beef ingestion, but there is a difference in how the digestive system processes the two meals.

> I know somebody who got really into blood glucose monitoring, and she tells me that the order in which she eats a meal affects how much it spikes her glucose. So if she eats a piece of toast followed by a piece of cheese, it causes her a bigger glucose spike than she'd get if she eats the cheese first and then the toast.

This is what I read in a book about glucose. So I went ahead and measured. I found it not true, at least in my case. The recommendations of eating salad before your meal do nothing measureable for my glucose spikes.

This is the main thing of Jessie Inchauspé. One of her many videos on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEEUrIQ_3O4