● Food Intelligence · Sweetener
Across 5,252 single-item sugar logs from 2,602 Signos members, the average glucose peak was +27.6 mg/dL — the textbook GI-65 sweetener that every other sweetener gets benchmarked against. The vehicle does most of the work: a teaspoon stirred into coffee averages +37 mg/dL in matched-pair logs (n=8,136), in tea climbs to +41 (n=1,740), and on fruit barely budges from baseline (+31 mg/dL, n=4,650).
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Yes — for the majority of members, with an average peak of +27.6 mg/dL across 5,252 single-item sugar logs from 2,602 Signos members. Across 5,252 logged meals where sugar was the focus, the mean glucose peak was +27.6 mg/dL and the median +23 mg/dL — moderate territory, and notably lower than the +35.5 mg/dL average we measured for honey on its own page. In the broader 43,229-log cohort that includes sugar paired with other foods, the mean climbs to +31.6 mg/dL because the surrounding meal compounds the response. Three levers drive most of the variance: vehicle (sugar in tea averages +41 mg/dL vs +31 on fruit), total meal carb load (very-heavy meals push the average to +49 mg/dL, a 74% escalation), and protein pairing (≥15g protein drops the peak by ~13%). The IQR spans 28 mg/dL (p25: +12, p75: +40) — the food itself is half the story, your meal context is the other half.
Some members spike +28.1 mg/dL. Others spike +48.8. The only way to know how you'll spike is to measure with a Signos CGM.
Sugar produces a mean peak of +27.6 mg/dL across 5,252 single-item logs from 2,602 members — a moderate response with a wide IQR of 28 mg/dL (p25: +12, p75: +40) that points to context as the dominant driver. Three levers explain most of that range. First, the vehicle: in matched-pair logs, sugar in tea averages +40.9 mg/dL while sugar on fruit lands at +30.9 — a +10 mg/dL gap from the same teaspoon, driven by what the surrounding food does to gastric emptying. Second, total meal carb load: light-carb meals averaged +28.1 mg/dL while very-heavy meals (110g+ carbs) hit +48.8 — a 74% escalation across 4 carb buckets. Third, protein pairings — meals with ≥15g protein ran ~13% lower than the no-protein baseline across 21,521 matched logs. These effects are observational from matched-pair Welch's t-tests, not controlled trials.
This page is grounded in 5,252 single-item sugar logs (the primary cohort) plus 43,229 total logged meals containing sugar from approximately 9,070 unique Signos members, captured through the Signos production PPGR cohort. Data was filtered to meals with a measured glucose rise between 0 and 100 mg/dL (ppgr_case='regular') to exclude outliers and sensor artifacts. Statistical comparisons between modifier groups use Welch's t-test on matched pairs; all effects reported at p<0.05 minimum, with the dominant modifiers reaching p<0.001. We report the mean peak glucose rise of +27.6 mg/dL across the right-skewed single-item distribution — the median is a few mg/dL lower at +23 mg/dL, which is typical for this data shape. The single-item IQR spans 28 mg/dL (p25: +12, p75: +40). Sugar logs were identified via a regex cohort match on the canonical food name 'Sugar' with explicit compound-term exclusions: 'brown sugar', 'sugar-free', 'sugar cookie', 'sugar cone', 'sugar snap peas', 'sugar plum', and 'blood sugar' are all dropped because the bare term over-matches into unrelated foods and the medical term. A minimum of 100 matched meals was required for any vehicle or form option to appear in the recipe builder.