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is this food ok?

V

VW754

Active Member
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43
First of all id like to say a big HI to everyone.

My hba1c is 7.4 (7.3 6months ago) i eat beans on toast every day for breakfast only,(about half a tin) around 9-30 ,then i eat around 5-6pm every evening,is this ok?
one doctor said,loose the baked beans there no good.......the other doctor said....there great,very high in fibre and thats why you dont get hungry around lunch time...keep it up!

Confused....well yes,whos right and who's wrong?
are these any good for me or not:
eggs.
rice krispes.
porridge.
bread.
biscuits.
bananas.
oatcakes.
 
Hi and welcome to the forum :D

It is all very confusing isn't it. I would say that it's better eating 3 meals a day rather than 2. The only real way you can found out if a food is suitable for you is by testing your blood sugar levels. Test them before you eat and then 2 hours after, you are aiming for the levels to be roughly the same.

Here is a link to information for the newly diagnosed that you may find useful

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=17088

Come back and ask as many questions as you like. There is nearly always someone who can answer them.
 
I agree that 3 meals a day is better than 2 for a diabetic i.e. eat little and often. I would avoid bread for breakfast with the beans as bread can be high-GI. Have you looked at the label on the tin of beans? What is the carb amount for half a tin? Is there a lot of added sugar? Overall beans are a good carb and high in fibre and low-GI but watch the additives
 
If you are going to have carbs in your diet, beans are a good carb because they are high in fiber. However, they are most often cooked with sugar (as in baked beans), and that makes them VERY high in carbs. Wheat products, such as toast, are high glycemic, meaning that the carbs in wheat are converted to blood sugar pretty quickly. If what you are eating is baked beans (made with sugar and/or molasses) on toast, my guess is that's probably too many carbs for a diabetic to eat at one time (unless you have a very small serving). A lot depends on how advanced your diabetes is.

My blood sugar never returns to normal after two hours, so I recommend testing at 1 hour and 3 hours, or 1-12 hours and 3 hours. The important thing is that your BS not go TOO high after the meal, and that it eventually return to normal, or near normal. Blood sugar that returns to normal 2 hours after a meal is what happens for non-diabetics, but I think it is too optimistic for diabetics unless you are eating a very low-carb diet (which you are not). In my opinion, a good initial goal is to keep all your post-prandial readings to 9 or less, and to try to get your BS back to 6.5 several hours after a meal (although it's certainly possible to do better than that). Judging from your A1c, you may not be doing that well.

Eggs are fine. Rice Krispies are high in carbs. I don't eat porridge, but I imagine it is high in carbs too. Bread in moderation is usually okay, but you don't want to eat big slices of it. If you can stand the taste of low-carb breads, you can certainly eat those. Biscuits are high in carbs. Bananas are high in carbs. Oatcakes are probably high in carbs, but I don't know just how much. A poster on another forum said that when she ate oats cooked from scratch, her BS didn't go too high; but when she ate instant oatmeal, it did. I don't know which of those would be comparable to oatcakes or porridge.

Are you testing your blood sugar at all?
 
Plain oatcakes are 5g carb per oatcake.

Bread - either Bergen soya and linseed bread, or Tesco wholemeal multigrain, for me, is okay in very small quantites - no more than 2 slices per day, and not every day.

Some people can eat a small serving of baked beans. I can't. Read the label to see how high in carbs they are - all carbohydrates, not just sugars. All carb turns to sugar in your blood.

Some people can manage a small portion of porridge; I can't. Nor can I eat bananas. As Caleb says, all breakfast cereals are high in carbs and will send your BGs high.

Get yourself a carb counter book - there is a good pocket-sized one in the Collins Gem series, just called Carb Counter, which is available from Amazon or any good bookshop. Count the carbs you eat in your usual diet, then decide where you can cut down.

I'm an extreme low-carber, and aim for about 30g carb per day, because I'm losing weight as well. Other people (eg Grazer) manage their blood glucose very well on about 150g a day.

If you want to control your diabetes and avoid getting complications like nerve damage and blindness later in life, you need to have a good look at your daily food intake and see where you can make changes! It can seem daunting at first, but you soon get used to it.

Don't be afraid to ask any questions you like - it can be confusing at first :)

Viv 8)
 
Viv, thanks for telling me about the oat cakes; I think I'll try them. I'm guessing they can be used like crackers. I need some kind of low-carb cracker to put my low-carb spreads on. I figured they would be like rice cakes, which are high-glycemic.

I didn't mention any brands of bread because I'm in the U.S. We have something called Joseph's pita breads and wraps here, all of which have just 5 carbs in them and taste good. But it's a small company, and I doubt they export.
 
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