bread how much should you eat with a meal?

[justkeepsmiling]

hi, im confused as how much bread to be eating with a meal as when reading about it on the internet it says to eat loads with each meal, but my nurse says just max 4 slices a day.. it seems everything contradicts what ive heard or read earlier.. i just dont know which to believe

 

[Ashleigh]

I'm not really qualified/experienced to say, but some people dont eat bread at all, and some eat the quantities indicated that they can by their meter. I dont know about if you were T1.

From what i've read, burgen bread, especially the soy and linseed one is the one that most people get on with.

Personally, I don't eat normal bread at all, occassionally if i'm stuck for something i'll have a wrap as its easy to get when out and doesnt seem to affect me much, and i used to have pitta bread, but i've given those up too now.

 

[CathyN]

Hi !!

Bread is a very personal matter!!! I have managed to wean myself off the idea that bread is eaten at every meal - and now I have an occasional 1/2 a slice. But I have to be careful which bread I eat. Bread will spike your blood glucose ( cause it to rise quickly ).

Do you have a meter and are you testing?? The only way to understand what bread does to your BG is to test before eating it and then again 2 hours after.

Generally speaking, white bread is a bit of a no go (!)
Wholegrain brown is much better but still, some people cannot tolerate that.
Many people on this forum eat Burgen Soy and Linseed bread.
I am fortunate in that I can tolerate a thin slice of Rye Sourdough.

For people on here who are trying to lower their carb intake, 4 slices a day would appear to be a whopping amount of bread. It depends what decisions you make about how you want to control your Blood Sugar.

Does that help at all??

Cath

 

[dawnmc]

I don't eat any, and Burgen doesn't do alot for my levels so I just do without.

 

[dwibley]

At a maximum I have two slices of wholemeal bread a day with either my breakfast or split with my main meal. But everyone is different and depends on how well if fits in with your glucose levels & lifestyle.

 

[hanadr]

I don't eat bread at all in general. I do ocasionally/rarely have half a slice of Burgen soya and linseed. I find avoiding carbs suits me best.
there's no actual need to eat any carb at all.
Hana

 

[Hobs]

Definitely eat to your meter results.
I make my own wholemeal bread and mainly have it toasted with scrambled eggs on it .. buttered toast, of course :wink:

 

[xyzzy]

My levels go way too high on more than one slice of Burgen Soya bread. It's a bit better if its toasted but not much. Bread like rice, pasta and potatoes are all starchy foods so they make blood sugars rise nearly as badly as pure sugar. I hardly eat any bread at all nowadays as its not good for my levels at all.

 

[IanD]

hi, im confused as how much bread to be eating with a meal as when reading about it on the internet it says to eat loads with each meal, but my nurse says just max 4 slices a day.. it seems everything contradicts what ive heard or read earlier.. i just dont know which to believe

You are right to be confused. The trouble is the health professionals trained when they were young (of course) so their experience of diabetes is second hand. They teach what they have been taught. The advice you get on this forum is from diabetics who are living with their condition.

The information you will get from nurse, dietitian & dr is based on what Diabetes UK (the charity, not this website) tell them & print in the literature. They will also tell that diabetes is progressive. Sadly, if you follow their advice, it is progressive -the amount of starchy carbs they recommend is more that we can cope with.

Many of us have found that cutting down drastically on carbs is the way to control our condition, & minimise or reverse complications. An increase in vegetables & normal fat protein foods is the way to go. I use powdered nuts in my cooking - ground almonds & coconut flour in place of wheat flour. It works well, though you need an extra egg in the recipe. I make an unsweetened cake-bread as a staple. It's much more substantial than normal cake.

 

[desidiabulum]

Timing can be an issue too. I had to abandon even a small slice of toast at breakfast as it spiked me, but a small amount of seeded low-carb bread at lunch doesn't seem to do too much damage - as always, test and see.

 

[BioHaZarD]

I don't do bread

 

[GraceK]

At the moment I'm not eating bread as it spikes my blood sugar too much, so it's better I do without. However, I like to eat things like cottage cheese, hard cheese, egg mayonnaise sandwich filler etc for breakfast so I need something to plonk it on, so I substitute Hovis Crackers or Morrisons Water Crackers because they're only approx 3g carbs per cracker. I actually prefer the the crunch value of crackers and don't feel deprived of bread which makes me feel too bloated. I also have some gluten free herb crackers from Sainsbury's free from range, which are great for having toppings on.

 

[xyzzy]

At the moment I'm not eating bread as it spikes my blood sugar too much, so it's better I do without. However, I like to eat things like cottage cheese, hard cheese, egg mayonnaise sandwich filler etc for breakfast so I need something to plonk it on, so I substitute Hovis Crackers or Morrisons Water Crackers because they're only approx 3g carbs per cracker. I actually prefer the the crunch value of crackers and don't feel deprived of bread which makes me feel too bloated. I also have some gluten free herb crackers from Sainsbury's free from range, which are great for having toppings on.

Ritz crackers are good 8 for 14g. Don't have them often but they were a life saver when I first got diagnosed and had to break my old carby habits. Make sure you put some butter on them along with the cheese! Don't take the box into the room with you :lol:

 

[LouiseW]

I've found a pita bread that has 16 carbs, 10 of which are fibre and it's the only bread I eat. It's also high protein at 10 g for a whole loaf.

 

[Paul_c]

I can get away with a single slice of Burgen Soya and Linseed bread when eaten with a fry up breakfast (bacon & eggs only or a cheese & tomato omelette)

The only other bread I can cope with is a half slice of the very heavy Kelderman "German Style" Rye bread.

34.4 gm carb per 100 gm... 400 gm packet, 137.6 gm per packet, 7 slices to a packet works out at 9 gm per half slice, but it's very slow carb... no spike, but a low long hump.

Luckily that one keeps well once opened.

My Burgen has to live in the freezer to avoid wasting it and I just get out a slice at a time.

You can also get Burgen in smaller loaves which have smaller slices.

 

[Squire Fulwood]

It's not so much the bread, it's more the flour in my case. Anything made with flour seems to cause me to have high readings. At the moment I have given into it and don't eat any bread, cakes (of course) and anything similar. I tried Burgen bread and some other suggestions but don't like many of them. I find it easier to forget breads and eat something else.

Oddly enough I can eat a reasonable portion of potato and a half portion of rice so it's not as if I am suffering.

 

[Defren]

I don't eat bread at all in general. I do ocasionally/rarely have half a slice of Burgen soya and linseed. I find avoiding carbs suits me best.
there's no actual need to eat any carb at all.
Hana

Completely agree. I don't eat any mass produced bread at all. If I want some bread I bake my own low carb. It tastes better, much lower in carbs and is pure and wholesome, unlike shop bought stuff full of chemicals, and rubbish. There is absolutely no need to eat bread at all, it can be replaced with much better and healthier calories/carbs.

 

[add19]

Well, I guess we all have our own mileage. What's good for one may not be so for the other. Just make up your diet plan and can't stress it enough, test, test and again test your blood glucose before meal and 2 hours after. To answer your question, best place to start is reading dietician blogs like this one (http://karengraham.ca/blog/how-many-slices-of-bread-can-i-eat-a-day/). The link explains how much slices of bread you can eat in a day. I know you may find some conflicting answers because like I said before, we all have different capacity to handle carbs in our system. I personally stopped eating supermarket whole grain bread since my diagnosis. Instead, I eat home baked Teff (low glycemic index flour) with protein at lunch and doesn't affect my BG much.

Type 2 Diabetes
2/27/14 A1C 9.0
5/27/14 A1C 5.6
initially Met 500mg x2 a day but reduced to just once a day
losartan potassium 50mg
30 minutes bicycling each day 5x a week. Very sedentary