bms?

Hi Mick,

You need to be a bit wary of the Tesco Diabetes diet. Their idea of a diabetes diet is one that is low in sugar but quite high in carbohydrates. I just had a look at their suggested meal plan for a day and it contains a high amount of starchy carbs in every meal. It's not as good for diabetics as Tesco would like us to believe.

Hi Mick
I concur on the advice to watch out for carbs.
Unfortunately, Diabetes UK and the medical profession are still advising diabetics to eat plenty of complex carbs. This is meant to keep your blood sugar steady. It does! Steady and HIGH:shock:
Unless you want to keep increasing your insulin,and possibly getting onto the weightgain spiral, you need to reduce your body's access to glucose. Table sugar turns into 50% glucose,( the other 50% i fructose, which jhas little effect on BG) but starch becomes100 % glucose in the body, thus if you eat 10g sugar, your total glucose will increase 5g, or about 1 on your meter. if you eat 10g starch, your total glucose will increase by 10g or about 2 on your meter.

Hanna

10g of sugar will raise a persons BG by the same amount of 10g complex carbs will… It’s like for like… In the average person this is normally 3mmol/l

The only real difference is that the sugar will hit the BG faster than complex carb, Sugar however can be slowed slightly when it is mixed with other ingredients i.e. If you eat 10g of sugar on it’s own this would hit the BG normally within 15 minutes, but put the same amount of sugar between two slice of bread and butter this is more likely going to take 20-25 minutes to impact on the system. Thats one of the reasons while when you having a hypo you use gluco-tabs, luccozade or in my case I actually use jelly babies (3=14g of fast acting carbs)…

But what also needs to be remembered is not only if you reduce carbs, then insulin will need to be adjusted accordingly, but some might have a different insulin to carb ratio both at different times of the day, but also different to another persons ratio… So an individual’s requirement for insulin amounts will be dependant of these factors…

And speaking from experience, insulin has never increased my weight what ever amount I’ve needed to inject to deal with the carbohydrates that I’ve taken on board…

Sorry Jopar but I'm afraid that is not correct. Have a look here at the metabolism of sugar and starch

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5446

Mick, I don't know anything about the Tesco diet but here are some suggestions for low GI lunches which might be of some use.http://ginews.blogspot.com/2006/06/food-for-thought.html


Now for the more technical bits in answer to Hana/Denis/Jopar :roll:
According to John Walsh (using Insulin)

1)One gram of carbohydrate raises the blood sugar about 3, 4, or 5 points for people who weigh 200 lbs., 150 lbs., and 100 lbs., respectively. (this is in mg/dl so 10 grms of carb will raise the BG 1.6/2.2/2.7mmol/l respectively)
2)The glycemic index, protein content, and fat content of foods can modify the speed and strength of Guide 1.

Click to expand...

In the absences of insulin if you took this in the form of glucose (gi 100) iit would impact the BGL very quickly, in the form of sugar (glucose/fructose gi 58) it would take a little longer. If the 10 grams were perhaps haricot beans (gi 30) then it would take much much longer.

The division between complex and simple carbs is not necessarily a useful one.The rate of absorbtion and consequent BG rise appears to depend upon the type of starch ( amylose gelatinises more slowly than amylopectin)
When insulin is present (either injected or ones own) the body not only absorbs glucose from the gut into the bloodstream, the insulin will at the same time be lowering the glucose level in the blood . If the a food takes longer to absorb, as in a lower gi food, then compared to a higher gi food, the impact on blood gluocse levels will be less. The post prandial spike will be lower and the overal glucose exposure less . Here is a graph from GI News showing the post prandial spikes after ingestion of 50gms of glucose, high gi, medium gi and low gi cereals It quite clearly demostrates that the area under the curve ie glucose exposure is lower for lower gi carbs. There are similar graphs for other commodities on the website.( © GI News, Human Nutrition Unit, University of Sydney) http://ginews.blogspot.com/search?u...-max=2010-01-01T00:00:00+11:00&max-results=36