I'm prediabetic

[AnnieC]

Hi everyone
Just joined this forum although I have read a lot on here before joining.
I am prediabetic type 2 my fasting blood test showed a glucose level of 6.8 this has been 2 years running
I saw the diabetic nurse at my practise and she said to continue with the low fat diet I am on...I have raised cholesterol....try not to have very high sugar foods and eat plenty of fruit and veg and wholemeal bread etc which I always do anyway.
I take blood pressure medication and statins

I cook most meals from scratch because I enjoy cooking and experimenting with what I cook I mostly eat chicken, turkey, fish and quorn love cheese but have the ones with reduced fats and the same with yogurts. I rarely eat red meat except venison.. which is my favorite when I can get it..thats very low fat and I love all vegetables green or otherwise and eat a lot of salads.I also make bread mostly wholemeal same with rice and pasta when I do have it so hope I am on the right track

I do have the book The Ultimate Book of Diabetic Cooking which has very good reviews by diabetics it has lots of information about diabetes it recommends a low fat diet and it has some lovely recipes also thinking of getting Anthony Worrall Thompsons diabetic cook book he wrote that with the support of Diabetes UK

 

[Yorksman]

I also make bread mostly wholemeal same with rice and pasta when I do have it so hope I am on the right track

If you have cut out out the obvious sugary foods, this is the area where you can probably do a bit more work. The main problem with supermarkets is their use of the word wholemeal or wholegrain. Waitrose wholemeal bread for example only contains 6% wholegrain flour and often, the use of these words is a marketing ploy to make something seem full of 'wholesome goodness'.

It's best to test yourself with a home meter and find out which brands are OK and which are going to cause your bloods to rise. The only rice I eat for example is Morrisons parboiled brown rice. It's quite chewy, takes 25 mins to cook but it does nothing to my bloods and it is 1/3rd of the calories of other brown rice. Buitoni wholegrain pastas too work for me. I bake my own bread with tried and tested floours, mainly rye flour.

Some exercise too will lower you BG levels. I worked up to 15 mins per day and then 2 x 15 mins per day and noticed it took roughly one full point off my average levels.

 

[PhilT]

Terms like wholemeal are regulated by law. I don't know which particular bread you refer to but the several I checked all had wholemeal flour as the largest (first) ingredient.

Pasta, bread and rice are all forms of glucose waiting to elevate blood sugar, regardless of name or colour.

"Wholegrain flour" is an oxymoron, if you mill it into flour the grains aren't whole any more.

Sent from the Diabetes Forum App

 

[Yorksman]

Terms like wholemeal are regulated by law. I don't know which particular bread you refer to but the several I checked all had wholemeal flour as the largest (first) ingredient.

To the contrary the term wholemeal is not defined by law and whilst it is accepted, though not a legal requirement, that wholemeal flour contains the contents of the wholegrain, wholemeal bread need not be made entirely from wholemeal flour. You can check for yourself on the food.gov.uk website and the 'Bread and Flour Regulations 1998' guidance notes, http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/ ... rguide.pdf

" The term “wholemeal” is not defined in law, however it is generally accepted that wholemeal flour is the entire wheat grain, which contains the bran and the germ" regulation 6.

When the term wholemeal is used in the description of a loaf, the regulations do not stipuate how much wholemeal flour need be used in that loaf. Even when 100% wholegrain is used to produce wholemeal flour, not all the ingredients of the loaf need be wholemeal. In the case of the loaf from Waitrose, the wholemeal content was only 6%. The list is:

Wheat flour (56%), water, wholemeal wheat flour (6%), yeast, wheat fibre, wheat gluten, fermented wheat flour, spirit vinegar, rapeseed oil and palm oil, salt, flour treatment agent, ascorbic acid.

For further information on industrial loaves, download a copy of 'A wholegrain of truth? Industrial loaf names, claims and contents' http://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/publications/

"Wholegrain flour" is an oxymoron,

An oxymoron is an epigrammatic effect in which two contradictory terms are used in conjunction for example, 'living death', 'sweet sorrow', 'bitter sweet'. They convey a sense of mood or feeling. Wholegrain flour is a milled flour which still contains the entire contents of the wholegrain ie bran, germ and endosperm. It doesn't mean that it does so with the grain intact as you seem to think. Advertisers 50 years ago used to advertise it as 'nothing taken out'.

 

[PhilT]

If it's flour it isn't a whole grain. I take things simply at face value. Granary bread has some whole grains in it, and there's a type of rye bread that is largely whole grains.

Bread is just glucose waiting to happen, whatever label is affixed to it.

 

[Yorksman]

If it's flour it isn't a whole grain. I take things simply at face value. Granary bread has some whole grains in it, and there's a type of rye bread that is largely whole grains.

They are seeded breads and can be made with either with refined or unrefined flours. The seeds are simply additions. What is laughingly called granary is often white refined flour, molasses, brown dye and a few seeds thrown in. It's very different from a german Vollkornbrot:

The Wholegrain Council's definition of wholegrain foods, whether flour, mustard, pasta or rice is that 100% of the original kernel – all of the bran, germ, and endosperm – must be present to qualify as wholegrain. Refined products such as white flour contain only the endosperm. The problem with UK legislation is that it allows for white bread with dye and a very small amount of wholegrain flour, with or without added seeds, to be sold as wholegrain when it isn't.

The reason why wholegrain flour has a much lower GI than refined flour is that the bran is cellulose based carbohydrate. Humans don't produce cellulase, the enzyme required to digest cellulose based carbs. This undigested content used to be called roughage. Now they call it dietary fibre.

 

[rousea]

They are seeded breads and can be made with either with refined or unrefined flours. The seeds are simply additions. What is laughingly called granary is often white refined flour, molasses, brown dye and a few seeds thrown in. It's very different from a german Vollkornbrot:

The Wholegrain Council's definition of wholegrain foods, whether flour, mustard, pasta or rice is that 100% of the original kernel – all of the bran, germ, and endosperm – must be present to qualify as wholegrain. Refined products such as white flour contain only the endosperm. The problem with UK legislation is that it allows for white bread with dye and a very small amount of wholegrain flour, with or without added seeds, to be sold as wholegrain when it isn't.

The reason why wholegrain flour has a much lower GI than refined flour is that the bran is cellulose based carbohydrate. Humans don't produce cellulase, the enzyme required to digest cellulose based carbs. This undigested content used to be called roughage. Now they call it dietary fibre.