Answer

It depends.

For starch, which is just a lot of glucose molecules linked together, amylase (the enzyme that breaks starch up into glucose) is present IN THE SALIVA. So that white bread is already partly glucose before you even swallow it.

Table sugar is sucrose. It has glucose in it, but the other sugar in sucrose is NOT glucose. So eating a “spoon full of sugar” might not even shoot into your bloodstream as fast as some starches.

The more COMPLEX the carb is (browner = usually more complex) the LONGER it takes to digest. That is why glucose from whole grain bread won’t hit your bloodstream with glucose as fast as glucose from white bread.

How fast a food dissolves into glucose and shoots glucose into your bloodstream is called, “glycemic index” or “GI.” If you have sugar problems, you should eat more complex carbs with LOWER GI.

I suggest doing a search of the term, “low glycemic index foods” or “low GI foods” to get a better idea of which foods are more “slow release” on the glucose. This will help you avoid “spikes” of high blood sugar that you get from rapid absorption of high GI foods.

This is the sort of thing everyone with sugar problems should know.