Hunch about Chinese...

[staffsmatt]

This is just a guess but I think one of the Chinese restaurants at the Trafford Centre put quite a lot of sugar in their sauces...

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[Jaylee]

Hi,
I feel your pain.

The Bengalli food I had a couple of weekends ago at a local resteraunt didn't do me any favours either...

& that was without rice or nam..!

 

[Kazza63]

Chinese always does this to me, especially the buffet restaurants. I always feel like I have a hangover the next day


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[staffsmatt]

Yeah I don't indulge very often but my other half and I fancied a Chinese and I thought why not! I normally try and have food that's likely to throw me for a loop at so I have a bit of time to recover things!

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[urbanracer]

What did you actually order though?

 

[Juicyj]

Hi Matt - am curious to see what you ate also ? I avoid anything in a sauce from either the indian or the chinese, they seem keen to load their food with sugar to improve the taste and even without the rice/nan etc it's still guesswork, I tend to stick to a 'something' egg fu yung or a tandoori mixed grill now as they are easier to cope with

 

[PseudoBob77]

That pattern looks familiar lol. I've found a slight delay by 3-5 hours before it suddenly spikes.
Probably all the salts, fats, sugars, proteins!

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[noblehead]

Quite a spike @staffsmatt, interested too what dish it was.

With Chinese/Indian food I tend to stick with the same dishes and the same restaurant/takeaway, reason being I know what portion size you get and know how to bolus for it from past experience.

 

[staffsmatt]

The main I had was chicken cashew nut with egg fried rice.

I also had a starter though that was a vegetarian something platter, it had a spring roll which I ate, a sticky jelly covered thing I ate some of, some onion sliced in a dish that I had a little of and a small pastry thing that looked like a pork pie (had half of that too). Can you tell that I only had the starter because it worked out cheaper!? Don't know what actually caused the spike but it was pretty instant, I was 9.9 with straight up arrow about 5 minutes after finishing my main course, the last green dot half way up the spike so it was probably something in the starter.

Oh and a drink of mineral water because my body is a temple and all that..

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[Brit90]

Being in an Asian country, I can tell you that the second ingredient to most of their food is Sugar and if it isn't raw sugar its some kind of sauce that already contains loads of sugar. When I ask places to make me food I try to tell them not to add sugar at all, as I do know they heap that stuff in.

Btw - I see you set your meter to be between 5 and 10 - is there a reason why you make the "normal" at these levels? I have mine at 5-7.2

 

[Wurst]

I've only been to one all you can eat Chinese buffet since diagnosis and this when there was no other option recently on a trip to Salzburg. I stuck to meats only i..e no rice / noodles and guessed bolus'd, surprising I got it right no spike or delayed effect. I ate almost double what I'd normally eat !

I didn't realize Chinese food had a lot of added sugar , I know Thai food is lethal wrt to sugar content.

 

[staffsmatt]

Being in an Asian country, I can tell you that the second ingredient to most of their food is Sugar and if it isn't raw sugar its some kind of sauce that already contains loads of sugar. When I ask places to make me food I try to tell them not to add sugar at all, as I do know they heap that stuff in.

Btw - I see you set your meter to be between 5 and 10 - is there a reason why you make the "normal" at these levels? I have mine at 5-7.2

Yep I feel better running at that range than trying to push it lower

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[fern000]

Thought I would share my experience with Chinese food!

My mum is Chinese and she cooks Chinese food for me without any added sugars. My BGs are pretty normal after eating the food she cooks. (I tend to eat brown rice with some Chinese dishes like fried egg, beansprouts etc.) But when I eat at Chinese restaurants/stalls it's another story. Certain foods, especially those with sauce/gravy, or those that are fried such as fried chicken, can bring up my BGs by quite a bit too. My guess is that they add quite a bit of sugar/starch etc. so I always add 1-2 more units if I'm eating something of the like.

Chinese food is great though

 

[staffsmatt]

I think, although I can't be sure, that it was something in the starter. Unfortunately their website is currently offline so I can't look up what I actually ate!

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[Oldvatr]

Thought I would share my experience with Chinese food!

My mum is Chinese and she cooks Chinese food for me without any added sugars. My BGs are pretty normal after eating the food she cooks. (I tend to eat brown rice with some Chinese dishes like fried egg, beansprouts etc.) But when I eat at Chinese restaurants/stalls it's another story. Certain foods, especially those with sauce/gravy, or those that are fried such as fried chicken, can bring up my BGs by quite a bit too. My guess is that they add quite a bit of sugar/starch etc. so I always add 1-2 more units if I'm eating something of the like.

Chinese food is great though

Think the sauces are heavily loaded with MSG, which is liquid starch. it is in their gravy too. I find even a pancake roll will push me over the top. And I get long acting peaks too, so its not just sugar.

I find that fried fish (no chips) from the chinese takeaway spikes me, but a Jumbo Cod from the chippy round the corner from it hardly gives any rise at all even though i eat twice as much. So the frying oil seems to be significant too.

 

[Lancelot J]

My first reaction was "I don't eat Chinese because I don't know how to cook them!"
I eat a lot of Chinese/Indian and general Asian food.
My rule has become "if I can see and recognize what I'm eating, I'm fine". It means I can control what I eat (including battered meat and dumplings). Dumpling skins are usually very thin and not very big.
Rice is out. Brown noodles (Yee Mee or soup noodles) I find are OK for me.
The danger, I've found is in the sauces. Sugar is used to provide the "sweet" and cornstarch or tapioca starch are used as a thickener so that can be a problem, especially as it's "unseen".
That said, at least where I am, you order your meal by individual dishes - different meat dishes accompanied by different vegetable dishes.
The trick; choose your dishes wisely.

 

[Indy51]

Thai is another cuisine that uses a lot of sugar in their cooking.

 

[Lancelot J]

Most Asian cooking is made up of a combination of 'tastes' - sweet, sour, salt and spicy.
There are no recipes as such, only proportions (and they're pretty subjective) so the same dish, made by different cooks, may taste quite different.
Indian is pretty much the same only Indian relies on the combination of spices.
I probably have over 30 eating places within a 500 meter radius of my home (and I've tried most of them).
Over time, with experimentation, I've found food I can enjoy that doesn't send my BG up too high.

 

[Oldvatr]

I find I can eat takeaway battered fish even Jumbo Cod (without chips of course) and no major apike in bgl, provided I buy it from my local chippie. However if I eat the same meal but buy it from the chinese takeaway nearby, then a small portion spikes me badly/ Its not the fish since I have tried it from both stripped bare of batter, so it is either the batter or the cooking oil.

 

[Juicyj]

I used to love Sushi until one day I was sat outside a Japanese restaurant and saw them unloading huge bags of white sugar - I thought at the time, why on earth do they need so much sugar, then I looked up how sushi rice was made and it twigged - I avoid Sushi now