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Chinese food

zazoopits

Well-Known Member
Messages
91
Location
highland
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
We ordered Chinese food tonight, tried the duck with ginger and onions, no rice etc, followed by strawberries and cream, tested three hours after finishing and levels were 8.8 which were kinda high. I randomly tested my husband (non diabetic) and his levels were 8.5?? Should I be relieved about me or concerned about him? Another dilemma. Any help?
 
It's not that easy to say. When you order a chinese, you have no real idea what they put in and my guess is that they will have added a lot of sugar. Fat and sugar are the main ingredients in many take outs as they make the meagre amount of ingredients taste good and go a long way. Sometimes a chinese take out can have the equivalent of 20 odd spoonfuls of sugar. It doesn't have to be that way of course and some restaurants do good meals but generally it is about perceived value. If the customer feels satisfied, they will return and skimping on the real ingredients and feeding them sugar, salt and fat is a tried and trusted marketing trick to maximise profits.

It's a lot lot cheaper and healthier to make your own. People tend not to have the time, or energy though and that's why there are so many fast food outlets now.
 
This very interesting as I have type 2 already and had chinese the other night. My BG just before I went to bed was 8.3 and at 6.45am the following morning was 5.1 how good is that! Must be a fluke - I'm just not that lucky!
 
I had the same incident a few weeks ago, I ate 4 dumplings And mixed vegetables and tofu and thought I was eating a fairly low carb meal at a Chinese restaurant and two hours after the meal my sugar was around 8 still.One of the members @coldethyl here informed me that Chinese food does that bec of the wheat and sugar content on their sauces. Same with Italian restaurants my sugar goes up to 10.
 
Scunner isn't it, especially when we haven't eaten rice! Maybe we should start a new thread about what's best to eat when eating out or take away!
 
zazoopits said:
Scunner isn't it, especially when we haven't eaten rice! Maybe we should start a new thread about what's best to eat when eating out or take away!
Click to expand...
Go on then!
 
You can often tell how a chinese restaurant marks up it's dishes pricewise. They buy their Vietnamese frozen king prawns from wholesalers for around £7.50 per Kg. A bag may have between 55 and 75 depending on brand/size. A mean salt and pepper king prawn dish might only have 5 and cost about £7.50. I see 8 at £5.50 as normal. One trick, to make the prawns look bigger, is to batter and deep fry them. Some double batter them. Properly done, they have a very fine dusting or corn starch. They are just salt and pepper dusted with cornflour and quickly fried with chives, spring onion and chopped chillis.

For a diabetic, they should look more like this:




and not like this:



 
Isn't life a ***** ... I want the ones in the bottom picture.
 
We buy frozen peeled prawns from some suss place or other so I defrost them in the microwave (fast) then drain them and roll them in SR flour.and drop them in a deep fryer I keep outside with the BBQ. They crisp up in 3 minutes and taste great any nasties will be killed with the high temp cook.. I can' eat many tho because I get gout and of course being T2.. But my wife and son polish off a few with a drizzle of lemon.
 
zazoopits said:
Scunner isn't it, especially when we haven't eaten rice! Maybe we should start a new thread about what's best to eat when eating out or take away!
Click to expand...
Yes we should @zazoopits I go out fairly often and eat out for dinners/entertaining... and food is always the dilemma: what to choose!
 
I don't see the point in a carb-less Chinese meal, I just count the carbs and adjust my insulin
I know how many units I need per 10gms of carbs & how my points one unit of insulin brings my bloods down.

After I learned to count carbs, the dietitian probably said one of the worse things anyone could have possibly said to a diabetic "now you can count carbs, you can eat anything you want"

For a long time I took that quite literally,

And I seriously do not know how most of the people on this forum are making it thru the night.
If I went to sleep at 11pm- and at 8, I'd be hypo(not waking up, needing help) by 2am.

In order to make it to 8 am, I have to be at least 15mmols.
And even still, it is not unheard of me to be drinking milk in th middle of th night.
 
Piper, I'm a prediabetic, quite possibly type 2, I try to cut down on my carbs because if I don't eat them, I don't have to do something about the high blood sugars they give me! I'm not on any medication and that's the way I like it. Just trying to enjoy " normal life" with a few tweaks. If I don't have he rice and if I can find the lowest carb meal I can, it saves me having to deal with it. Hope this makes sense. It sounds like you are very well informed about carbs and what works for you, I think that's great and hope to be so well controlled some day.
 
Mmm, I ate some like the bottom ones recently, Tesco's version.
They weren't too bad, I'll buy some more and re-test.
Then again, it depends what number you're chasing.
If you're only 0.3 above a non-diabetic..........
 
I would say a reading of 8.8 a couple of hours after eating is fine, especially after a Chinese.
 
If I were you I would go and seek some advice because having to go to bed at 15 and still possibly going hypo isn't good I would say your using to much insulin
 
During the day, on a lower dose of Levemir it was not unusual for me to be in the 20's.
I have 9 total autoimmune conditions- with my type 1 not even being the worse of the bunch.

Having multiple autoimmune diseases that do not play well together has a major effect on my blood glucose levels.
I am just not the typical diabetic.
 
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