Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCPPresident at Five Journeys, Functional Medicine & Wellness Provider, Best Selling Author, Passionate Champion for Health

Why You Should Eat Protein First

20 Feb 2025 · 1 min

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1:06

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP, describes a personal anecdote where she ate Manchego cheese and chopped liver (protein) before having a piece of cake; she reports her blood sugar remained stable. The core recommendation is to eat protein first (before carbohydrates/sugar) because protein buffers the glycemic impact and prevents blood sugar spikes, making meals more manageable. The tone is informal and advisory.

Chapters

I ate the weirdest dinner. I ate Manchego cheese, crispy pucks, and I slathered them with chopped liver. I didn't eat anything else at dinner. I know, it's sounds kind of good to me. Oh, I think it's delicious. But it's like a weird meal when you see people, let's have chopped liver on crispy cheese. People say, what? So I eat this for dinner and then I felt a little bit better and I had a piece of cake. And my blood sugar after eating all of this, you know, the cheese and the chopped liver is 100% protein. And then I had a piece of cake and my blood sugar didn't go anywhere. And the take home message is really like, protein first, protein first, protein first. Because it levels out the impact. If you're gonna eat sugar, you wanna have that buffer beforehand. So I always say to my kids, like, eat your protein first, don't eat your rice first, eat your protein first. Because that's gonna level out your blood sugar and allow your body to have more resilience around whatever you're exposing it to. Instead of spike your blood sugar, play catch up, spike your blood sugar some more. It just a lot. It's so much more workable that way. Yeah, absolutely.