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Dairy question

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phil2440

Member
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23
Location
Coventry, UK
Type of diabetes
Type 2
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Tablets (oral)
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Hi all, I'm researching Low Carb & thinking about having a go. I'm a Type 2 who can usually keep my BS under control, though I tend to od on fruit :shock:
I'm puzzled about dairy products. All of the stuff I've read lists cream & cheese etc as acceptable, but none makes any mention of milk. Is milk not acceptable in low carb regimes? Why?
 
Phil......... Milk contains Lactose which will get an insulin reponse. However you like fruit as do i. From experience that would be more of a worry because Fructose dosnt get the Insulin response but does have a direct ticket to the liver where it happily raises your trigs thus potentialy negating the benefit of lo carb.
But at least you are looking to take positive steps which is good

Dave P
 
Hi Phil,

Milk is fairly high in lactose (a natural sugar) and so the carb count is quite high - for example, skimmed milk contains about 5g of carbs per 100ml. The lactose content of other dairy foods is a bit lower and therefore the carbs are a bit less - for example, single cream will have about 4.1g of carbs per 100ml and double cream about 2.7g.

There are 2 factors to be considered:

Generally, you would only eat cream in relatively small quantities, say a couple of tablespoons at a time and therefore, your portion size and carb count is smaller than drinking a glass of milk which may be 200ml or more.

As cheese, cream, butter etc are higher in natural fats and proteins, this means that the lactose is absorbed more slowly and hence, will not make your BG rise in the way that drinking milk would.

Hope this helps.
 
I would assume, then, that a small amount of milk in tea / coffee would do no harm (I always use Gold Top - Channel Island milk when at home)?
I tend to drink 4 - 5 cups decaffeinated tea per day (don't really like coffee much)...

... Jim
 
A wee drop shouldn't affect you too much, but it's probably a good idea to use full fat milk rather than skimmed or semi-skimmed which have proportionally more carbohydrate.

fergus
 
It's a good reason for using Gold top9 Jersey0 milk in your coffee. Pity it tastes so awful in tea.
Whole milk is 4.8% carb ( according to Collins) and skimmed is 5.0%. Thus if you only use milk in your tea and coffee, it isn't much to worry about. and as a low carber, you aren't having it on breakfast cereal :lol:
 
Thanks for the responses guys. Luckily I only drink milk in tea so it shouldn't be a major problem. :D
Interesting comment about the fruit/fructose/trig reaction sixfoot. Had my annual blood test a couple of months ago & the "professionals" complained about my trig levels (and something called sweet cholesterol) so I've got to have another one later this month. Pity they didn't mention the link between my fruit habit and trig levels :shock:
 
Trigs are principally generated from carbs, fructose doesn't help any, but the good news is they respond fairly quickly to an appropriately low level of carbs, and fish, fish oil or other sources of Omega 3 may be a plan too.

Some insulin users use milk as a hypostop. About the only thing I have retained from my previous low fat diet is a preference for skimmed milk, but since I only ever use it in coffee the quantities don't bother me much.

Some of the more extreme "primalists" are anti-dairy, but IMO small amounts, especially cheese and butter are doable.
 
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