The new pecking order

"Veges first, carbs last": the chance discovery that could revolutionise the way we eat and help fight obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

- JANE CLIFTON

For someone whose research career briefly hit the doldrums after emergent DNA science failed to answer her burning questions, Jessie Inchauspé's enthusiasm bounced back on a surprisingly simple concept: eat your veges first.

The advice that everyone's great-grandmother might have doled out is hardly the holy grail the young biochemist had set out to find to elucidate the human condition. But her research on the effect of eating patterns has brought promising new insights into how to manage a range of deadly conditions, notably obesity and diabetes, from their ground zero: blood sugar, or glucose.

Inspired by her own experience using a personal blood sugar monitor, she has aggregated recent clinical trials into strategies for controlling blood glucose spikes - known to be one of the golden keys to controlling obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders. Her book, Glucose Revolution, posits a three-step order-of-eating system: in simple terms, vegetables first, then proteins, and carbohydrates last.

Inchauspé had been working for a medico-science research company in Silicon Valley when, as an incidental staff benefit, her employers decided to test a then-novel bit of kit: a digital monitor that tracked glucose via a tiny filament inserted in the arm. Having spiralled through the customary range of eating styles typical of her then twentysomething age group - from strict vegan to keto to what-the-hell junk food - she became fascinated by how different foods affected her blood sugar.

She noticed her better energy and mood levels coincided with prolonged periods of stable glucose. Then she twigged that the order in which she ate certain food groups could have a dramatic effect on that glucose stability.