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Need opinions on my GI foods search site

N

no_more_spikes

Member
Messages
8
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi there,

I'm a type 1 diabetic and have been for the last 8 years. My insulin regime has been pretty similar over those years but recently planning to become a father I decided to try out the Freestyle Libre and see if I could improve on a recent poor Hb1c result. It highlighted the fact that my blood sugars were spiking massively after eating, this lead me to read the book 'Thinking like a Pancreas' where there was an emphasis on injection timing and the GI in food. Having looked around the various resources for the GI ratings of various foods I found the Diogenes research and saw it could be used as long as it is not for commercial use. Annoyingly the data was in a reasonably un-accessible format so I decided it would be nice if it could be accessed over the web through a nice clean interface.

I have uploaded the first live version here now; www.gifoo.co

What I really need is any feedback so that I can improve it and make it more useful for myself and for other people requiring access to this kind of information!


Thanks
Tom
 

Hi, Tom, even though I'm not T1, the problem with low GI foods is that a lot of diabetics will still spike eating low GI foods. To those that do finding alternatives to the carbs and sugars is necessary to get control of their blood glucose levels and their condition. We all have different tolerances to carby and starchy foods!

Hope you have success in your endeavour!
 
Hi, I think that's excellent ,I like the fact that you have put in the confidence level and data source when available. As you say the original data base is decidedly user unfriendly.
One improvement (though you seem to have put a lot of work into it already) might be to be able to either open the results in a new tab (I couldn't seem to be able to do that) or to compare two or three things side by side.
 
Thank you both for your feedback, exactly what I'm looking for!

nosher8355, I'm not sure if I could modify the interface to somehow take tolerance into account, I'm unsure how it could be worked out, maybe it could be?

phoenix, I like what you have suggested, very interesting. Out of interest why do you want the individual records to be comparable or openable in their own seperate windows?

I have put a reasonable amount of time into it (maybe a week) and probably won't put much more time into it unless there seems to be genuine interest. It's very interesting for me to see whether others find it useful or helpful at all, especially if I could help any of my fellow Diabetics, that would be fantastic. Personally I have found the GI information helpful in adjusting my injection timings.

If anything seems incorrect / inaccurate or anything could be improved please let me know (again thanks nosher8355 and phoenix). I am an IT consultant by day so I enjoy trying to improve and simplify these kind of things, however I'm sure my medical knowledge is a big weakness in all this

Thanks
 
Works OK to get commercial foods, but for instance, I could not get a number for a carrot. Diabetics, to be free from bad effects in the long term, should be eating more whole foods and trying to not need so much insulin, right?

One of the problems brought up by the other person who replied about everyone being different is, and here is what he didn't say, there are other factors in addition to just GI and insulin matching. Whether you have exercised or had alcohol within a certain number of hours will effect blood sugar numbers, even if you eat the same foods and amounts. Some people have good luck eating vinegar or grapefruit at meals with starches - it seems to slow down starchy spikes for some people, perhaps. It is all very complicated, huh?
 
no_more_spikes said:
If anything seems incorrect / inaccurate or anything could be improved please let me know
Click to expand...

Just had a quick look, first food item I type in was oats, you have Quaker Porridge Oats down as 34.8g per 100g when the actual figure is 60g of carbs per 100g.
 
GI GL makes no difference to my meter. It says a carb is a carb.
Another point on another thread is if it is fibery and is digested much slower, we need active insulin for a longer period of time. Mine tends to run out around 3 hours. So I guess if my stomach isn't empty by then I'll need another injection. Not always high enough for a correction but then won't come back down.
 
Thanks for all the replies!


Kristin251, when you say GI GL makes no difference to you, do you mean that you do not take into account these values at all when timing your injection?

There is no intention to solve the issue of insulin timing and amount, as the many variables involved in working these things out is incredibly complex and different from person to person, I personally found that knowing the GI of certain foods is a good start to understanding when I should be injecting and how long foods take to act (roughly). When I first attempted to try and eat low GI I had no idea of the GI values of foods until I started using the Diogenes spreadsheet.

The purpose of the app for me is to provide the basic GI information in order to help inform my decision along side the other factors that have been mentioned here (excercise. fibre, alcohol, sickness etc..).

The wholefoods information (the missing carrot!), I'll start looking into this and see if I can figure out a way to integrate more whole foods into the system. I do agree diabetics should be eating lower carbohydrate wholefoods more often, sometimes though this is just not possible and you need to grab something out and about!

The incorrect data is a big concern as I've random checked a few of the other carb/100g values which seem correct, but some of the other values of CHO g/100g do seem off, such as porridge, very odd.

Looks like I'm going to have a busy weekend!
 
That's odd ,almost think I am looking at something else!
I got:
''60.0g (Medium) for Quaker Oats''.
It is the variation of things like oats/porridge that I would like people to be able to compare .

Carrots are there in several versions
Carrots. canned. re-heated. drained
Carrots. old. boiled in salted water
Carrots. old. boiled in unsalted water
Carrots. old. raw
Carrots. raw
Carrots. young. boiled in salted water
Carrots. young. boiled in unsalted water
Carrots. young. raw
 
phoenix said:
That's odd ,almost think I am looking at something else!
I got:
''60.0g (Medium) for Quaker Oats''.
Click to expand...

Hi @phoenix , the OP must have updated the carb value per 100g since I pointed it out.
 
noblehead said:
Hi @phoenix , the OP must have updated the carb value per 100g since I pointed it out.
Click to expand...
That's correct, I changed the value but I do need to do a more thorough check of all values. Fun

Also good point about the carrots, they are in there already, as are many other wholefoods. Maybe the search function isn't effective enough?
 
no_more_spikes said:
That's correct, I changed the value but I do need to do a more thorough check of all values. Fun
Click to expand...

Yes great fun, only picked up on the oats being wrong as I love them and eat them for breakfast most mornings

Good luck with your endeavours Tom.
 
I tend to agree with @Kristin251 - I don't generally look at GI/GL of foodstuffs when doing my insulin. Generally when I'm eating I am eating from a range of items so to get a real "GL" would require some form of weighted average across all the items. What I tend to bolus off is Carbs and protein then any extensions are done based on experience of food. The issue tends to be that something that shows up as low GL may not necessarily solicit that response physiologically, and other factors in a combination mean that the GL measure doesn't necessarily reflect the effect.

I also wonder about a number of the Carb amounts. Fish fingers show 14.2g/100g where as the Birds Eye ones are 21g/100g and my experience of them is that they aren't a low GL!

From a purely functional perspective, I note that what you type critically affects the results you get.

If you type "chips" you get a lot more results than if you type "chips " and some entries show up in both and others in only one or the other.
 
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The addition of carbs and protein in a low GI GL meal will also have a completely different outcome. I am now at the point I can look at my plate, dose and get very close but all macronutrients need to be considered as to how slow or fast anything is going to effect bs.
 
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