• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Carbohydrates

B

Bruce Buchan

Newbie
Messages
3
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Hi I'm type 2 diabetic. Trying to understand carbohydrates and sugar when buying food. Can I eat food that has high carbohydrates but shows low sugar. Example oats carbs 24.2g and Sugar 0.5g
 
At the end of the day all carbs are sugar and depending were they are on the GI chart will raise your bg at different rates , the sugar part will raise your blood sugar the quickest and could cause a spike .
 
Last edited:
Bruce Buchan said:
Hi I'm type 2 diabetic. Trying to understand carbohydrates and sugar when buying food. Can I eat food that has high carbohydrates but shows low sugar. Example oats carbs 24.2g and Sugar 0.5g
Click to expand...
Yeah, you need to figure in all 'Carbohydrates' in the Nutritional Information on the packaging - below that it will say '..of which sugars'. The other carbs are starches with lower GI (as @jaywak described). But beware - they may be starches in the packet but some are converted to sugars when cooked. Your oats will mostly arrive quickly as sugars if cooked as porridge, but take longer if eaten in muesli.
 
I’m new to this I have been checking ingredients but concentrating on sugar from carbs, so really I should be really looking at the carbohydrates?
 
Bruce Buchan said:
Hi I'm type 2 diabetic. Trying to understand carbohydrates and sugar when buying food. Can I eat food that has high carbohydrates but shows low sugar. Example oats carbs 24.2g and Sugar 0.5g
Click to expand...
Hi Bruce and welcome.

Well - you can eat it, but the issue is that carbohydrates - all carbohydrates - are digested to glucose. The "of which sugars" doesn't really provide any useful information for a T2 doing low carb. So (for example) if I was to eat potato, bread, and pastry, none of which contain any sugars but lots of carbs, my blood glucose would rocket and stay elevated for a long time, because my system cannot deal well with that level of glucose. I know this for me because I've tested for it, having eaten the food.

Ultimately any question of "can I eat..." will be answered by testing blood glucose before and +2 hrs after eating, and seeing how well your system deals with the carb in the food. Some of us can deal better with some things, less well with others. I'm ok with legumes, but definitely not with pastry (similar GI if I recall correctly - I don't find the GI at all helpful).

So I'd suggest to you that, if you're aiming for a low carb approach, you work out how many carbs you want to eat in a day, and then use a meter to check what that does in practice. Keep a record, and adjust your approach if needed.
 
jaywak said:
At the end of the day all carbs are sugar and depending were they are on the GI chart will raise your bg at different rates , the sugar part will raise your blood sugar the quickest and could cause a spike .
Click to expand...

It's not so easy, for a start GI isn't universal, different carbs have different GI's when digested by different people., so the published GI's of food items are only an average or a guide. Some Type 2 diabetics process certain carbs better (= worse for blood glucose) than others do. So many of us test how different carbs actually affect us personally. Which is down to our genes, our gut biome and our habitual diet.

Pure glucose raises blood sugar (blood glucose) faster than other carbs do, but table sugar is only half glucose and half fructose and as such has a lower Glycaemic Index than many simple carbohydrates do. For example, the GI of sucrose (table sugar) is 65, but the GI of mashed potato (without any added fats like butter) is 83 !!!
 
Last edited:
Bruce Buchan said:
Hi I'm type 2 diabetic. Trying to understand carbohydrates and sugar when buying food. Can I eat food that has high carbohydrates but shows low sugar. Example oats carbs 24.2g and Sugar 0.5g
Click to expand...
I'm afraid that the short answer is probably not - sugar is a carbohydrate, and it is carbs which cause us problems.
With any luck reducing carbs will lower blood glucose and bring about a recovery in the metabolism - for plain ordinary type 2s it is almost like confirmation of the correct diagnosis.
There are, however more interesting variations, but trying a low carb diet first might either help a bit or help a great deal.
I eat low carb and have done so for the last 7 years, and my blood glucose numbers are normal.
 
I eat porridge most mornings with nuts berries dates and honey... I get a spike to around ten but within a couple of hours I'm back around the seven mark.
I'm happy with that.
I cannot go through life without spikes but the important bit for me is how quickly or otherwise that spike comes down.
Thats me not you or others.
Some wouldn't dream of having porridge let alone honey but I think my body has become accustomed after daily use for years.
We are all different but similar.
SInce diagnoses probably ten years ago I'm guessing I've experimented and it ends up I've added more to my daily intake than I have removed... all medicinal in mind.
Plates before pills and let food be thy medicine kind of approach and I'm doing alright. No I don't have a daytime job!
 
Back
Top