How to test for different foods

The best way it to test immediately before eating something then at 1 and 2 hours afterwards to see how much it causes sugars to rise. Most of us try to limit the rise to 2.0 mmol/L max others try for even less. Avoiding carbs is the best way to limit the rise as they cause the biggest spikes.
Hope that helps
Regards
Mark

It's always worth looking at the nutritional labelling for any food, and avoid any with high carbohydrate/sugar content. Then test the rest immediately before eating and 2 hours later.

You can also test at 1 hour and 3 hours to check for fast or slow acting carbs if you want more detailed information. Some people will also test at shorter intervals depending on what they're checking - but to begin with pre meal and 2 hours afterwards will do for starters!

Testing in general can also be a useful guide to how you're managing your levels overall, and can also tell you about other things like responses to stress, illness, exercise, etc, as these may well have knock on effect on your meal levels.

Robbity

Myfitnesspal is helpful, but as it's compiled by members, the details can vary enormously. I'd recommend looking at a few entries of each food type to gauge the accuracy. Good luck - it really does help to track your food (if incredibly time-consuming when entering recipes!).

Just to be clear, the time for testing post meal is from the first bite, not from after the meal is finished.
Personally I test at 90 minutes and at 2 hours. If I am still not happy then I keep testing half hourly until I am.
Keep a food diary including portion sizes and record your levels alongside so you can see patterns emerging. If a particular food spikes you too high, try it again with a smaller portion. It may well be you can manage a small portion, or it may well be you will have to eliminate it.

There is a book (and an ap) called carbs and cals that is very useful. It's available from Amazon. You can also Google for carb contents. Supermarket websites such as Tesco detail all the nutrients of all their products, so that is also useful. Then there are labels on all packaged food that detail the total carbs.

Everyone, whether diabetic or non diabetic will have their blood glucose raised after a meal, so if you test too early then you would be stressing yourself up, so I think testing regularly at two hours after the start of your meal should suffice.


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Keesha said:

Everyone, whether diabetic or non diabetic will have their blood glucose raised after a meal, so if you test too early then you would be stressing yourself up, so I think testing regularly at two hours after the start of your meal should suffice.


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The elevation is quite different for people with diabetes v. people without. Personally, I don't want my BG going above 7.8 (the top of a normal response to food). If I wait until 2 hours, and assume if I'm below 7.8 then that it is OK, I will have missed a boat-load of time when it was elevated way above where I'm comfortable.

If what you care about is ONLY if it comes down to a reasonable number in 2 hours, testing only at 2 hours is fine. If what you care about is capping the spikes, you need to test at least at 1 hour and 2 hours (or more, as others have suggested).

So decide what you care about, and that will dictate when you test.

Makes a lot of sense. Thanks for input.


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