What Happens to Your Blood Sugar When You Eat a Bagel With Cream Cheese
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Cream cheese bagels are an affordable, quick and comforting breakfast. However, this meal’s high carb load and lack of protein and fiber can negatively affect your blood sugar, leaving you hungry again shortly after eating.
A classic bagel is made from refined white flour, water, yeast and salt. Although sizes vary, many bagels are quite large and contain several servings of carbohydrates.
“Eating a bagel causes a rapid and significant rise in blood sugar because it is a dense, high-glycemic carbohydrate with very little fiber,” says Elizabeth Rubin, MD, clinical counselor at Embers Recovery in Phoenix, Arizona. Health.
Additionally, cream cheese is a high-fat dairy product that people commonly spread on bagels. It lacks protein, a key nutrient that helps stabilize blood sugar and makes you feel full after eating.
Here is the basic nutrition facts for an average 131-gram bagel and a 1-ounce (oz) serving of cream cheese:
| Bagels | Cream cheese | Combined | |
| Calories | 364 | 99.2 | 463.2 |
| Protein | 13.9 grams (g) | 1.74g | 15.64g |
| Carbohydrates | 69.4g | 1.56g | 70.96g |
| Fat | 2.75g | 9.75g | 12.5g |
| Fiber | 3.01g | 0g | 3.01g |
Fiber and protein help slow digestion and the release of sugar into the blood. Foods low in protein and fiber, like bagels, are digested quickly and have a high glycemic index (GI), meaning they raise blood sugar levels quickly. The GI ranges from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the greater the impact on blood sugar levels. A bagel has a GI of around 72, which is considered high.
“This sharp spike in glucose triggers a strong insulin response, which can later lead to a drop in blood sugar that leaves many people feeling tired, hungry or irritable only hours later,” Rubin said.
Does adding cream cheese help?
Fats, like cream cheese, slightly slow digestion and lower the GI of high-carb foods, but not as drastically as protein, and not enough to negate the high carb load.
“The effect is limited because the amount of fat is relatively small compared to the large amount of refined carbohydrates in bagels,” Rubin said. “You need protein and fiber to significantly blunt the blood sugar spike of a bagel, and fat alone won’t do the trick.”
Even though bagels are high in carbs and low in nourishing nutrients like protein and fiber, you don’t need to give them up completely.
Making a few adjustments to your typical bagel order can help keep your blood sugar more stable and your hunger in check.
- Pair your bagel with protein: Pair it with a food containing at least 15 grams of protein. “Pairing a bagel with protein, such as eggs, smoked salmon, cottage cheese or even a protein-rich nut butter, helps stabilize post-meal glucose levels more effectively than cream cheese alone,” Rubin said.
- Eat half the bagel or order it “by the spoonful:” Drinking half the bagel is an easy way to reduce your carb load. Removing your bagel before adding your toppings can also reduce the carb load by about half.
- Add soluble fiber: Soluble fiber forms a gel in your digestive tract, so it is particularly effective in lowering blood sugar levels. Bagel-friendly pairings high in soluble fiber include: avocados, hummus, chia seeds, berry puree, and more.
- Make your own low-carb, low-protein bagels: Some recipes using simple ingredients like cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, and almond flour contain about 20 grams of protein and less than one serving of carbs per bagel.
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