Move over, Food Babe. There鈥檚 a new food influencer in town and she is no mere 鈥渂abe.鈥� This one hangs out on Mount Olympus.
Much like a superhero, she has an origin story. At age 19, the woman who would later adopt the moniker of Glucose Goddess broke her back while jumping off a waterfall. In the wake of the accident, mental health problems emerged. She pushed on, getting her undergraduate degree in mathematics and her Master鈥檚 degree in biochemistry, eventually landing a job in product management at 23andMe, the company that takes your DNA and claims to unearth your biological mysteries.
It was at that company that she enrolled in a pilot study to wear a continuous glucose monitor鈥攁 disc stuck to the skin that measures the glucose in the fluid just beneath the skin as a proxy for how much sugar is in your blood鈥攁nd it changed her life, despite her not having diabetes. She claimed that spikes in her mental distress were correlated with spikes in her blood sugar. Jessie Inchausp茅 became The Glucose Goddess, a French influencer with a sickness-to-health story, quoted in听Vanity Fair听补苍诲听Vogue,听ready to change your life and sell you a supplement.
In order to learn more about her claims, I had to go from casual reader to potential customer. I had to give her my email address.
Hacking your body with dietetics 101
Every health influencer has their bugaboo, a secret villain that is draining your life force like a vampire. Inchausp茅鈥檚 bugbear is spikes in blood sugar.
You see, when we consume something sweet, it gets broken down into smaller and smaller molecules, like a piece of IKEA furniture being disassembled. This process takes place as the food moves from our mouth to our stomach to our small intestine, and it is in the latter that the resulting smaller sugars like glucose pass through the intestinal membrane and enter our bloodstream. This sudden 鈥渟pike鈥� of glucose in the blood is detected by our pancreas. It releases more insulin, which helps cells absorb the glucose from the blood so that it can be used as energy.
According to the Glucose Goddess, these 鈥減ostprandial鈥� spikes, so-called because they occur after a meal, lead to fatigue, infertility, mental health disorders, wrinkles, and seemingly every negative health outcome you can think of. In a bit of shocking fearmongering, she told an interviewer that glucose spikes cause a phenomenon that听, ageing us, and then killing us. Her website offers a quiz to find out if her solutions are right for you鈥攕poiler alert, they almost always are on sites like hers, and you end up on a mailing list when you try to see your results. With questions like 鈥渄o you need coffee to be able to feel awake鈥� and 鈥渄o you find it difficult to lose fat if you want to,鈥� she guarantees that almost everyone will qualify for her intervention.
A rise in blood glucose level after a meal is normal. I asked Dr. Michael Tsoukas, a researcher and endocrinologist at 黑料不打烊 University who specializes in diabetes. In between meals, the concentration of glucose in the blood tends to range between 4 and 6 millimoles per litre of blood. After eating, he tells me, that concentration can go up by 2 or 3 millimoles, even going as high as 11. Beyond 11, it becomes a sign of diabetes, meaning that the body has a problem absorbing the sugar from the meal. But even if it doesn鈥檛 surpass 11, prolonged glucose spikes after a meal are a sign of impaired glucose tolerance, one of the diagnostic criteria indicating pre-diabetes which can eventually turn into diabetes. (Some sources will report blood glucose levels in milligrams per decilitre or mg/dL. You can use听听to do the conversion.)
鈥淲hether the spikes [in glucose in the blood after a meal] cause organ damage,鈥� he writes to me, 鈥渉as been debated for years.鈥� There is some evidence showing associations with inflammation and cardiovascular disease, and infertility is seen more in people with either pre-diabetes or diabetes, but the real worry for now is when spikes go above 11 or stay elevated for too long.
Jessie Inchausp茅, meanwhile, advertises a free list of听听to avoid wild spikes in your blood sugar. What is true among her list is so basic that it鈥檚 hardly a secret, while the rest is questionable. Prioritizing a savoury breakfast over a sweet one? Very reasonable. Avoiding the eating of sugars and starches on their own but accompanying them with protein, fat and/or fibre? A good recommendation.
But eating food in a strict order, with fibre going down the gullet first, followed by protein and fat, and ending with carbs? 鈥淲e know food doesn鈥檛 work that way,鈥� says Leah McGrath. She is a registered dietitian and founder of听. 鈥淗ow are you supposed to eat a bowl of听chicken, beans, and rice?鈥� she asks me rhetorically. Ditto for sandwiches. As for Inchausp茅鈥檚 tip to drink one tablespoon of vinegar before your meal to reduce your blood sugar spike by up to 30%, Abby Langer, a former clinical lead dietitian turned science communicator,听听that the studies propped up behind this recommendation tend to be small and were done in people with diabetes, who are not Inchausp茅鈥檚 target audience.
Should we all wear a continuous glucose monitor?
The theoretical prevention of blood glucose spikes is one thing, but Inchausp茅 also wants to听see the data, which is why she has听听for the Stelo Glucose Biosensor, a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) made by Dexcom which costs听听depending on the subscription. (The sensor that sticks to your skin needs to be changed every 15 days, hence the subscription model.) Should we all be tracking our blood glucose levels, even those of us who don鈥檛 have a diagnosis of diabetes or prediabetes?
鈥淣ot at all,鈥� Dr. Tsoukas tells me. The list of people who would best benefit from a CGM, according to him, is limited to situations where there is a clear reason to look at blood sugar levels: those diagnosed with diabetes or prediabetes; those with a family history of diabetes or who have obesity and who want to rule out having prediabetes or diabetes themselves; pregnant people at risk of gestational diabetes; those with multiple episodes of low blood sugar for no clear reason; and people who use certain medications, like steroids and psychiatric drugs, that can raise blood sugar levels.
Outside of these situations, wearing a CGM is a harder choice to justify, scientifically. Dr. Tsoukas tells me that a CGM 鈥渄efinitely leads to health habit improvement鈥� in people without diabetes, by increasing awareness and understanding of what diet and exercise do to the body. (He pointed out that he has given paid talks to general practitioners for Abbott, the makers of the continuous glucose monitor Freestyle Libre.)
The twist, though, is that CGMs have been shown to听听blood sugar levels in people without diabetes and to report听听in those levels in those same people, possibly because blood glucose levels are influenced听听but also by stress, tiredness, and other changes to our body. Moreover, improving health habits long-term is听, and obsessing over real-time data relating to food can lead some people down the road to an eating disorder.
Inchausp茅 may call the CGM she endorses听听but so far, I鈥檓 not seeing enough evidence that we should all stick a white sensor on our arm to monitor our blood sugar levels, though I鈥檓 open to changing my mind in the future.
There鈥檚 always a supplement
Health influencers like the Glucose Goddess are a dime a dozen. They break free of the dullness of academia with vibrant branding, themed colours, and aspirational photo shoots. They drum up excitement with a wall of anecdotes from anonymous people who say that they changed their lives. They get book deals, and TV shows, and speaking engagements, 补苍诲听听to promote 鈥渉olistic health,鈥� and online courses where you too can become 鈥淕lucose Revolution certified鈥� by paying听听to watch six hours of online classes.
And, of course, they have a supplement to sell you. Inchausp茅鈥檚 is the听鈥攏o relation to COVID-19鈥檚 spike protein. She claims it can reduce your blood glucose spikes by up to 40% with its combination of vegetable extracts, cinnamon, lemon extract, and white mulberry leaf extract. Like the glucose monitor she endorses, the formula is sold as a subscription, this one just shy of USD 30 a month.
She provides a long list of clinical studies that allegedly back her choice of ingredients, with none of the studies having tested this specific combination. For cinnamon, the only reference I saw her cite is听, where giving people with type 2 diabetes a daily dose of cinnamon was reported as lowering blood glucose. Not only was this study contradicted by听听over the years, but the scientific journal that published it just released an听听There are major holes in how this study was reportedly conducted and its results analyzed, and as epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz pointed out on听, for this study to be accurate, it would mean that cinnamon鈥攖he spice most of us have in our cupboard鈥攊mproves blood glucose levels听better than Ozempic. Colour me skeptical.
As for the other ingredients in her supplement, some of the studies she supplies as proof have little if anything to do with controlling blood sugar. The lemon extract she uses has been trademarked as Eriomin and it contains two molecules extracted from the citrus fruit: eriocitrin and naringenin. The trials tend to be small; the results, not particularly impressive; and many of these studies involve the makers of Eriomin to one degree or another. It鈥檚 also important to compare a supplement like naringenin with actual, proven medication: one of the studies she lists on her website was published in听, and it shows a long table with the many, many substantiated benefits of metformin鈥攁n off-patent drug commonly used to treat diabetes鈥攚hile naringenin鈥檚 corresponding benefits are mostly answered by a literal series of question marks.
Then, there鈥檚 mulberry leaf extract, the ingredient with the most studies provided by Inchausp茅. A听听that she herself cites and which was published in 2023 reports that the studies done in humans were of low quality and the supplement did not appear to significantly lower blood glucose levels in healthy people, i.e. participants who did not have diabetes, i.e. Inchausp茅鈥檚 target audience for this supplement. It鈥檚 also important to mention that mulberry leaf extract is part of traditional Chinese medicine, a hodgepodge of ancestral traditions听formalized under Mao Zedong听during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and most of the studies done on its potential for lowering blood glucose levels were conducted in Asian countries.
And those vegetable extracts filling out the rest of her Formula? They鈥檙e just there to boost your dose of antioxidants.
Is she a nutrition expert?
Jessie Inchausp茅 has some good recommendations, sure, but none of them are secrets or hacks, and whatever isn鈥檛 old news is perched on iffy ground. You may think that her Master鈥檚 degree in biochemistry qualifies her to give nutrition advice that sometimes strays from the mainstream, but it does not. Coming out of my own bachelor鈥檚 degree in biochemistry and my Master鈥檚 in molecular biology, I was in no position to advise people on what they should or shouldn鈥檛 eat. 鈥淪he is not a medical doctor,鈥� McGrath, the dietitian, told me, 鈥渁nd definitely not an endocrinologist,鈥� the specialty that treats diabetes, 鈥渘ot a dietitian and not a certified diabetes educator.鈥�
Driving this point home, in one of the emails I received from the Glucose Goddess I was invited to fill out my weight, age, and sex to be told how much protein I should consume in a day. The result was much higher than what an actual registered dietitian recommended for me, and Inchausp茅鈥檚 quiz did not even ask about my workout habits, which play a role in how much protein I should be consuming.
But just below my results was an ad and link to buy her Anti-Spike supplement.
If you want to keep your blood sugar from yo-yoing too much, you can learn about the glycemic index of the food you eat, meaning the degree to which these items will raise your blood sugar. Diabetes Canada, for instance, has听听on this topic.
And if you鈥檙e looking for a nutrition plan, I propose leaving the Glucose Goddess up on her mountain and booking an appointment with a mere mortal registered dietitian instead. The advice you will get will be personalized and based in actual evidence.
Take-home message:
- Jessie Inchausp茅, also known as the Glucose Goddess, is an influencer who blames bad health on spikes in blood glucose after a meal, even in people without diabetes
- Her 鈥渉acks鈥� to prevent these spikes are either run-of-the-mill advice freely available elsewhere or they are questionable
- She advocates for the wearing of a continuous glucose monitor, even though there is enough evidence that we should be skeptical of such a universal recommendation
- She sells a dietary supplement to prevent these blood glucose spikes, even though no study has scientifically tested her supplement and many of the studies she cites for its individual ingredients do not show the benefits she claims
