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Do you count the carbs in beans?

Janedent

Janedent

Member
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13
Hi.
I eat a lot of beans - haricot, borlotti, kidney, chickpeas, you name it. Most of my meals contain about 100g of beans.
I know they're slow-acting carbs.
The dietician at my diabetes clinic told me I don't need to count the carbs in beans when calculating my insulin dose. Recently my BS has been a bit higher than I'd like and I'm wondering if it's the beans.
Do other people count them?
 
Janedent said:
Hi.
I eat a lot of beans - haricot, borlotti, kidney, chickpeas, you name it. Most of my meals contain about 100g of beans.
I know they're slow-acting carbs.
The dietician at my diabetes clinic told me I don't need to count the carbs in beans when calculating my insulin dose. Recently my BS has been a bit higher than I'd like and I'm wondering if it's the beans.
Do other people count them?
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Thanks Diawara. I have the carbs and cals app (which is brilliant) so I know what the carb content is. But I was told not to count them. I'm interested in whether other people count them.
 
T2, not on insulin. I notice that although the carb content of beans, pulses, legumes etc is reasonably high on paper, in practice these carbs don't seem to affect my BG as much as I would expect. I can have eg a lamb stew with broad beans and not much happens to BG at all.
 
Hi,

I do take beans into consideration when calculating my insulin.
It could be the beans, but if your BGs have been higher over all (not just after beans?) you may need to check your basal dose? (The long acting insulin.) Before experimenting on injecting for beans..
 
To be honest if it’s got carbs I count it unless is negligible , beans personally I would count as long term carbs so would take insulin at a different time than the 20 mins before .
 
Personally, I’m vegetarian and eat beans, chickpeas etc most days (also T3c on insulin, similar to T1): the summary is I do count the carbs in them as part of the meal.

I wonder if the dietitian was trying to simplify things for you and assumed you only ate them occasionally? I remember being told not to bother counting vegetables, so in theory I would hardly need insulin as most of what I eat “isn’t worth counting” - unfortunately that isn’t true in practice
 
Beans in general have a high fibre content. High fibre, particularly soluble fibre, slows down the metabolization process. This would slow down the absorption of nutrients including carbs.
 
Melgar said:
Beans in general have a high fibre content. High fibre, particularly soluble fibre, slows down the metabolization process. This would slow down the absorption of nutrients including carbs.
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Slowed down or not, carbs still need insulin. And pulses aren't that slow for me, not even if combined with fats like bacon.
 
Antje77 said:
Slowed down or not, carbs still need insulin. And pulses aren't that slow for me, not even if combined with fats like bacon.
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@Antje77 I'm not suggesting one way or another whether they raise blood sugars, just a simple fact that beans have high fibre which slows down the metabolization and absorption of nutrients and carbs. They raise my blood sugars too.
 
I think at the end of the day. It’s just about timing the bolus?
One day’s digestion don’t write it in stone for the rest.
Experiment. Get to know your general metabolism & test.
 
Personally I count them, but I might extend my bolus (I'm on a pump) for their carbs, specially if there were no fast acting carbs in the meal.
 
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