Fruit! Evil or Angel?

[adm]

I'm working out what's my best breakfast food, so today I made up a great big bowl of fruit salad...

Apple, Melon, Plum, Passion Fruit, Strawberries, Raspberries, Orange, Pink Grapefruit. Yummy.

I had a big bowl of it for breakfast and it was great. My pre meal BG level was 8.0. 2 hours later is was 10.3

Now, I know that fruit is full of sugar, but I would have thought that it was "food" fructose that should be easily and fairly quickly absorbed. I was pretty much shocked to see 10.3 after 2 hours....it was a big bowl of fruit though - so maybe I'd have better luck with half the portion size along with some natural yoghurt?

A couple of hours later, before lunch, I was down to 6.1.

So what fruit is good, what is bad etc. I have read that banana and pineapple is "bad", but I would have thought that the fruits in the salad above were all pretty "good" maybe apart from the melon.

Anyway....what's the common wisdom on fruit salad? (And yoghurt for that matter....)

 

[Dobbs]

hi adm
fruits vary a lot in their carbohydrate content. Do you have a copy of a carb counter book, such as the Collins Gem? I'd really recommend you buy one, as it's so valuable.
Basically, and speaking personally here, all kinds of berries seem to be totally fine, as far as their impact on my blood sugar levels go, but others such as bananas and grapes have a tendency to send me a good bit higher. There seems to be no instinctive way of knowing what fruit will have what impact, so I recommend you get hold of a carb counter book and try various combinations and test your resulting levels.
I find natural yoghurt totally OK to eat, indeed it's one of my staples. Not fruit yoghurts, however.

 

[ShyGirl]

A lot of fruit and veg cause high levels , I started a topic aohut it as I was really interested in hearing different experiences. Carrots and corn are healthy yet raise levels , same with bananas. We should just eat yoghurt and drink water!
A reading of 8.0 before your meal is probably considered higher than it should be.

 

[adm]

Well....I'm going to continue with the fruit salad tomorrow, but just have a smaller bowl with some natural sugar free yoghurt and see how that goes.

I think the grapes, kiwi and melon in the fruit salad may be the main cultprits, but it's made now and I'm still going to eat it! :twisted: I'll just be a bit more careful next time and see if the effects are different.

On the 8.0 - I know it's a bit high, but I only started on the low carb diet earlier this week, and my first morning reading was 9. Since then it's been 8.5, 7.8 and 8, so the trend is downwards which is a good thing. I'm expecting it to really take at least a month or two before I start to see "good" morning BG levels.

I also got a copy of the Collins Gem carb counter - but I have to say, I find the format confusing. I wish they'd just use a "standard" serving size, or just give a carb percentage. It's annoying to find a food I like with very low carbs, then realise that the "serving size" is one tablespoon or something. It would be better to be able to compare apples to apples as it were.... it's still useful though...

I've dusted off my Montignac diet book as well. That's really good - although it's really a low GI diet as opposed to a low carb diet, so it;s going to need some modification, but it's got some great recipes.

 

[hanadr]

What do you mean by food fructose?
Remember your metabolism doesn't distinguish sugar from an apple from that in your white bag from the supermarket. It's all sucrose, regardless of source. The suff in the bag did originate in plants too :shock:
Also Fructose doesn't raise blood glucose. It's processed along a completely different pathway. In fact treated more like fat. Although you can convert fructose to glucose, it rarely happens. In theory therefore, fructose should be Ok, but it does elevate the triglyceride levels and as such should only be used in SMALL amounts.
It's a sad fact that ssweetness has a price; either in aftertaste from artificial sweeteners or BG from sugars.
Hana

 

[adm]

What do you mean by food fructose?

Hana

Oops. I meant "Good" fructose.... I always thought that fructose wasn't such a "bad" sugar to put into your body?

 

[Synonym]

Hi adm

Just wondering how you are getting on with your 'experimental research'?

You will probably find that it is all down to portion size and since you carry your portion sizer with you at all times it is easy to calculate. Your cupped hand is a pretty good measure! 8)

 

[adm]

Sorry for the slow reply on this, I've been off on a business trip.

Well.....what I've found is that there's really very little variation between the different fruits i have tried. I have not tried pineapple or bananas yet though.

I've been mainly trying berries (raspberry, strawberry, blueberries) in various mixes, plus fruit salad made with berries, but also apples, pears, plums and melon.

A halfway decent bowlful of fruit and yoghurt (probably two handfuls of fruit, and a half dozen loaded dessert spoons of yoghurt), or a red grapefuit and the same amount of yoghurt has been upping my BG levels after 2 hours between 1.5 and 2.0 points.....so to my mind, this isn't really too bad as my morning levels seem to be down to between 5 and 6 right now....

I should probably go for smaller portion sizes too.

I'll keep testing....

 

[Synonym]

Sounds like you are getting there!

Testing, testing, testing!!