● Food Intelligence · Protein
Across 43,967 single-item chicken logs, members averaged +31.3 mg/dL — lean chicken itself is near glucose-neutral (GI=0/GL=0). But add rice and the average climbs to +42.1 mg/dL (+12 mg/dL), a sandwich pushes it to +45.5 mg/dL (+15 mg/dL), and a very-heavy-carb meal hits +50.0 mg/dL — an 82% escalation driven entirely by what's on the plate alongside the protein.
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No — lean chicken (grilled, baked, rotisserie) has GI=0/GL=0 and averaged +31.3 mg/dL in 43,967 single-item logs. The carb on the plate is the entire glucose story. Across 43,967 logged meals where members ate chicken alone, the average glucose peak was +31.3 mg/dL (median +27 mg/dL). Lean chicken contributes ~0 digestible carbohydrate — the spike in any given meal comes almost entirely from the rice, bread, pasta, or tortilla paired with it. Sandwich-format chicken averaged +45.5 mg/dL (+15 mg/dL over the no-carb baseline), while rice pairings averaged +42.1 mg/dL (+12 mg/dL). Keeping the meal under 40g of total carbs holds the average to +27.5 mg/dL; very-heavy-carb builds (110g+) push it to +50 mg/dL — an 82% escalation. This page covers the lean-protein cohort only; fried and breaded chicken has its own Atlas page because the breading changes the response materially.
Some members spike +27.5 mg/dL. Others spike +50. The only way to know how you'll spike is to measure with a Signos CGM.
Lean chicken — grilled, baked, rotisserie, or shredded — carries a published glycemic index of 0 and a glycemic load of 0. It contains no digestible carbohydrate, so it cannot independently drive a glucose excursion. The +31.3 mg/dL average across 43,967 single-item logs reflects real-world portions where members logged chicken alongside very little else; the measured peak is a near-protein baseline. The dominant lever observed in the full cohort is total meal carb load: the carb-bucket analysis shows escalation from +27.5 mg/dL in light (0–40g) meals up to +50.0 mg/dL in very-heavy (110g+) meals — an 82% climb driven entirely by co-ingested starch. Two secondary levers pulled in the opposite direction: avocado pairings trimmed −7 mg/dL and salad / leafy greens trimmed −4 mg/dL, both highly significant. Effects are observational, not yet causal.
This page draws on 43,967 single-item chicken logs (meals where lean chicken was logged alone, no pairings) from 14,126 unique Signos members, plus a broader 338,494-meal cohort spanning all meal contexts where chicken appeared, collected through the Signos production CGM platform. Data were filtered to postprandial glucose responses (PPGR) between 0 and 100 mg/dL to exclude sensor artifacts and implausible readings. The chicken cohort excludes fried and breaded preparations (tenders, nuggets, KFC-style, chicken-and-waffle) — those form a separate cohort tracked at the fried-chicken Atlas page. Modifier effects were estimated using Welch's t-test on matched pairs against a defined baseline; all reported effects carry p<0.001 unless noted. The food was identified in member logs using a regex matching "chicken" as a primary ingredient, excluding compound broth/bouillon entries where chicken is flavor rather than food. Any carb-pair or veggie-pair slot requires at least 100 matched meals before it appears in the recipe builder.