Food Labels

A simple rule I would use to keep to low carb, would be to keep to 5% or less carb content. Sometimes listed on ingredients as how many grammes of carbs per 100 grammes of the product. So 5g or less per 100g. I would find most crackers too high in carbs.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. There are low carb recipes.
I find this an excellent resource for info and inspiration.

Vix2000 said:

Thank you. This was my meal, 3 crackers with tomato slice and Philly light, then a small amount of cashew nuts

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Did you test at first bite & 2 hrs after first bite to see if it was too many carbs for you?
you should have a rise of no more than 2, more than that too many carbs less than 2 then the meal was ok for you. Ideally the nearer to your start number the better.

Looks like your meal was around 15-16g carb allowing for the carbs in the tomato & Philadelphia (not sure how much you had so can’t say how many carbs for certain)

For me that would be too many carbs but we are all different and you may be able to tolerate that amount of carbs. That’s why testing before & after is so important, we can all eat differing amount of carbs from different things.

Was it a main meal or a snack. As a main meal that wouldn’t keep me satiated for very long, not much fat or protein. I don’t snack at all but if I was having a snack I’d go for meats, cheese, perhaps a hard boiled egg with some mayonnaise

Vix2000 said:

Thank you. I can’t eat large meals often, due to stomach issues and secondary cancer. So far I have been told I have prediabetes but having another test to check. The advice from my GP diabetic surgery was to swap things out for whole meal or lower calorie/sugar alternatives, but I’m not doing too well reading the labelling for the best options. I don’t need to lose weight. I’m not testing yet.

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Often we have more things going on than just diabetes & we have to look at the bigger picture and it’s more complicated than just it would be better if you do this or do that from advice on a forum. Sometimes diabetes isn’t the top priority and we can only do our best.

You’ve had some good advice on reading labels, as in 5g carb per 100g. But that’s all relative also as it depends how much of that 100g you are going to eat. For example I have a teaspoon of chutney now & then that is 45g of carb per 100g - but I eat 5g of it so the carbs work out at about roughly 3g carb

diabetes wise it’s the whole carb figure you need to look at not just the sugars, all carb turn to sugar.

To work out the carb per portion for my example above the math is
45g carb divided by 100g then times by the size of portion your having - so in this case 5 = 2.25g carb that I’m going to be eating

Hope I haven’t confused you more

Vix2000 said:

Sorry, new to this and struggling! I have been reading until I'm cross eyed and still cannot grasp food labels. I think I know which bits I'm looking at, ie. protein and carbs? but Ive no idea what readings I should be aiming for. For example I'm trying to decide which of these 3 crackers would be the best, what sections should I be checking and what numbers should I be aiming for, please?

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In terms of what impact there is on your blood glucose, you look at carbohydrate content, wholemeal (etc) is still carb. All these crackers are much the same - they're all high carb - and if you're going to have one or the other it shouldn't really matter which. Three crackers would weigh maybe 18 grams, and 60% of that is carb, so around 12g carb in total for the crackers alone.

I can't suggest what you should be aiming for - that depends on what you are intending to achieve. My tactic on diagnosis in 2019 was to reduce carbs to around 20g/day. That worked very well and very quickly for me - BG normal (36) in four months. Over the next two to three years I lost about six stone. I've maintained that since. Unfortunately this is far from an exact science and to some extent you have to try it and see how it affects you.

Structured blood glucose monitoring is (in my view) essential for this. You're testing to see how well you handle the carbs in whatever you eat. So you test before eating, to establish a baseline, and then again two hours later. At the +2hrs point your insulin response should have dealt with the incoming glucose, and your blood glucose should have reduced roughly back to where it was before you ate. Incidentally "peak blood glucose" will probably happen around 40 minutes after you eat, but that information isn't all that helpful.

The other thing to remember is that your liver is constantly adjusting blood glucose levels in response to what the liver consider your body might need at any particular moment. Although food is the biggest single influence on BG, your liver's definition of what your "normal" blood glucose ought to be is also relevant. This is why (for example) people often see their BG go up when fasting - it's the liver making glucose in the absence of food.