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Beer is just liquid toast - test

LittleGreyCat

LittleGreyCat

Well-Known Member
Retired Moderator
Messages
4,415
Location
Suffolk, UK
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Dislikes
Diet drinks - the artificial sweeteners taste vile.
Having to forswear foods I have loved all my life.
Trying to find low carb meals when eating out.
For various reasons, including inconclusive fasting readings after beer the previous day (or not) and having seen a red wine test, I decided to do a beer test.

Testing materials - 500 ml bottle of Hatherwood "The Green Gecko" from Lidl. Alcohol 5% by volume. Nicely hoppy. Numnumnumnumnum......

BG immediately before test 5.6 mmol/L
BG 30 minutes after first mouthful (2/3 bottle gone by then) 5.4 mmol/L
BG 2 hours after test 6.3 mmol/L

So my BG dipped then went up slightly; however it seems to have stayed in the non-diabetic range for 2 hours after eating. I would have to test over a longer period to see if my BG was still above 6 a couple of hours later but scheduling this might be a problem. I was in trouble for delaying the evening meal as it was.

So what is this liquid toast thing?
I must remember to test with a couple of slices of toast at some point but don't want to knock myself out of ketosis at the moment.

Oh, and the methodology for post prandial testing says 30 minutes after the first mouthful then 2 hours. Not sure quite how that works with a relaxed social meal spread over 2 hours.
 
To do a proper comparison, you would have to know how many grams of carbohydrate were in your bottle of beer, then eat exactly the same number of grams of carbs in your toast.

Also, you would need to drink the whole bottle of beer in the same time that took you to eat the toast... spreading the beer out over 45 minutes or so will have a huge reduction in the overall blood glucose impact. This is why glucose tolerance tests require that we drink the Lucozade in 3 minutes.

Although... I have no idea how the two different foods vary in digestion time... so that would be another variable.

And then there are all the different beers; lager, bitter, stout...
 
I don't know why the methodology says test 30 minutes after first mouthful. My levels rarely (if ever) move up during the first 30 minutes. The trend is downwards, possibly because I am on my way down naturally and eating is the only thing that stops this. After 30 minutes they start to rise and peak somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes. Consistently, no matter what I eat.
This is confirmed by Libre sensors.

Not sure about beer. I don't drink it.
 
In the real world I think the problem with beer is that few beer drinkers stop at one pint. Find out what the carbs are in a pint but try to stay sober for long enough to multiply it by the number of pints in a session.

The first mouthful argument ran and ran for a time and never answered the question about the four course meal spread of a couple of hours etc. I just don't get too anal about it and if I can just get an idea of the actual spike that I am interested in then I throw the stopwatch in the dustbin.
 
all I know is if I have a beer I wake up with considerably higher BS than when I don't
 
Brunneria said:
To do a proper comparison, you would have to know how many grams of carbohydrate were in your bottle of beer
And then there are all the different beers; lager, bitter, stout...
Click to expand...

Regular lagers tend to typically vary in carbohydrate content from about 10 to 15g per pint.

Some ‘light’ beers may be better and have less than 10g of carbs per pint and some with less 5g of carbs.

Stouts, Porters and Guinness tend to be on the higher end of the carbohydrate spectrum amongst beers and can have upwards of 20g of carbohydrate per pint.

There are a wide variety of real ales covering pale ales through to porters. Real ales will typically have a carbohydrate content of 10 to 20g of carbs per pint.

Certain real ales may be given additional flavouring with extra sugar or honey so be prepared for the effect to vary with different beers.
http://www.diabetes.co.uk/alcohol-and-blood-sugar.html

Courtesy of our host : )

Geoff
 
LittleGreyCat said:
Oh, and the methodology for post prandial testing says 30 minutes after the first mouthful then 2 hours. Not sure quite how that works with a relaxed social meal spread over 2 hours.
Click to expand...

Ive always tested 2 hours after the last mouthful of food, if I tested 30 minutes after the first mouthful Id still be eating!!
 
Brunneria said:
To do a proper comparison, you would have to know how many grams of carbohydrate were in your bottle of beer, then eat exactly the same number of grams of carbs in your toast.

Also, you would need to drink the whole bottle of beer in the same time that took you to eat the toast... spreading the beer out over 45 minutes or so will have a huge reduction in the overall blood glucose impact. This is why glucose tolerance tests require that we drink the Lucozade in 3 minutes.

Although... I have no idea how the two different foods vary in digestion time... so that would be another variable.

And then there are all the different beers; lager, bitter, stout...
Click to expand...

The test lacked a certain amount of scientific rigour, but more than made up for this with participation pleasure.

It did have at least as much validity as the blanket "as many carbs as two slices of toast", I think.

Although random checking suggest perhaps 8g of carbs per slice of commercial wholemeal bread so it may not be that far out. Again another source suggests around 15g of carbs per large white slice so 30 g in total.

One glass of beer, often leads to another.
Much the same with slices of toast, or bread around a sandwich filling.
 
walnut_face said:
all I know is if I have a beer I wake up with considerably higher BS than when I don't
Click to expand...

I was beginning to think this, but testing so far hasn't proved it.

Sometimes I go lower when I had a beer the day before.
 
There are just so many factors involved in all of this, including if you have beer, it may dent your appetite, then also going onto the other theme of not all calories, or carbs for that matter, being equal.

So many times we hear people say, "X, Y or Z really causes a huge spike for me", only to have a series of retorts stating the opposite for another poster. It really does come down to what an individual's body does, and is sometimes as fickle as the relevance being on any given day.

When doing these experiments, the Libre sensors can be ideal, as they provide a 24/7 trace for their 14 day life, so little gets missed, whether it happens 10 minutes or 10 hours after all that important scientific research.
 
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