TikToker Says Restaurants Give Free Bread to Spike Glucose and Encourage More Ordering — What’s the Truth?

A viral video claiming that restaurants offer free bread and chips to stimulate cravings and prompt customers to order more off the menu has people divided.

TikToker Cowgirl.Crystal begins the clip asking, “Have you ever wondered why restaurants give you a bowl of bread or chips before your dinner?”

“It’s not because they want you to fill up on their free stuff,” she asserts. “When you sit down, they hand you the menu. They hand you a bowl of bread or some chips and salsa or something, and it’s not because they’re being generous. It is because you will spend more money.”

The video has been viewed more than 700,000 times since Crystal posted it on July 5.

“When you’re looking at that menu, you’re eating the bread or the chips,” she continues. “Biologically what happens when you eat that bread or those chips, your glucose spikes so you get really hungry. So you order the food, then they bring you more bread and more chips. And then they bring you the dessert menu.”

She concludes that diners’ best bet is to “fill up on fiber first.”

“Get some veggies, some zucchini, or some fried pickles are a better start,” she advises. “Even though they’ve got the breading, you’re getting some fiber.”

Many commenters on the video weren’t convinced that a complimentary bread basket leads them to order more.

“Maybe that’s their intent, but that doesn’t happen to me,” wrote one TikTok user. “ The bread or chips never impacts my degree of hunger.”

“I must be opposite, I fill up and don’t order as much,” another commenter shared, while a third person wrote, “Nope! Bread makes me full.”

PEOPLE asked Stephanie Schiff, a registered dietitian at Northwell Health Huntington Hospital, to weigh in on the debate.

“It’s hard to say if eateries do this deliberately,” Schiff says. “But whether they do or not, certain things happen when you start a meal with bread or tortilla chips and sometimes eat almost mindlessly.” 

She explains that bread and chips are examples of simple, or refined carbohydrates, which are quickly digested and broken down into simple sugar. 

“That sugar is dumped into our bloodstream,” she says. “ It causes a sharp, quick spike in your blood sugar.”   

“You also get a surge of insulin, the hormone that helps control your blood sugar,” she continues. “Insulin can increase your hunger and you may find yourself increasing your food intake. Often, we keep reaching for carby or sugary food because it releases happy hormones such as seratonin and dopamine.  And that makes us feel better — at least for the short term.”

Schiff says this can lead to weight gain, especially around the belly, as well as inflammation in the body, which can increase a person’s risk for pre-diabetes, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.  Consuming a lot of refined carbs can chronically increase cortisol, she adds, which leads to more inflammation.

“Of course, everyone’s different,” she notes. “Some people can get full eating bread or chips before their entree comes. This may be due to bloating caused by the carbs. Or they may just get full easily. This can lead them to only eat part of their main course, and they may skip dessert.” 

Schiff advises those people to “go ahead and save the rest of the meal for later, but remember that you may be kickstarting your glucose levels with those simple carbs, and chronic glucose spikes could lead to problems later on.”

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She offers another reason not to reach for the bread basket.

“Recent studies have shown that it’s best to eat your vegetables at the beginning of your meal and save your simple carbs for the end,” she says. “ Vegetables have fiber, which helps fill you up.”

Schiff says starting a meal with vegetables, which are complex carbs, will help keep your blood glucose from spiking as sharply as it would if you had eaten refined carbs first. Adding protein can also result in a  more moderate rise in blood sugar. 

“Are restaurants trying to get us to eat more on purpose?  I haven’t heard anyone admit to it,” she says. “But if we know what the results are when we eat simple carbs at the beginning of a meal, maybe it will give us a reason to make a conscious decision to change our eating habits.” 

She adds, “We can be more mindful about how much bread or chips we’re eating and can choose to eat our refined carbs at the end of the meal, or at least with the meal, to avoid that sharp blood sugar spike and become healthier in the process.”