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Pasta

C

Cameraman

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I've been having a read through various posts and I'm confused as to pasta. I know I can't have tinned stuff and don't anyway. But why shouldn't I eat fresh or dried pasta, or for that matter Potatoes etc? The only diet sheet I've seen and trying to follow is the GI diet one, and that says pasta is OK. So now I'm just plain confused.

I've only been diagnosed a couple of weeks now and am finding most foods confusing to be truthfull.
 
Rice ,pasta,bread and potatoes are all starchy carbs.These convert totally to glucose in the body thus putting up your blood sugars.Do you have a blood testing meter.Try testing before a meal and then 2 hours after,if it is a meal containing pasta or potatoes you will see just how they affect you.I would say eat these sparingly until you see the effect they have on your blood sugar.
 
Thanks, I'm learning all the time. No I don't have a testing meter, can you reccomend one thats easy to use please?
 
I think most of them work in the same way.I have a one touch ultra which I find easy enough to work with.You may be lucky enough to get one from your doctor/nurse but sometimes they will not give testers to type 2 diabetics.The opinion on this forum and ,I believe,with most diabetics is that testing can help you learn which foods you can eat and which foods you can't.If you test before a meal and then 2 hours later and your reading is much the same as the before reading then you have got that meal right.
 
Thanks, my wife is keen for me to get a meter so I can make sure what she's doing is right as she is making much more of an effort than I am at the moment and taking it much more seriously.
 
You do need to take it seriously.Keeping your blood sugar(BS) levels down is very important for your health ,both now and in the future.That is why it is important to get your eating habits right and eat food which does not send your BS rocketing.That is why testing is important at the start of your learning journey to achieve control of your diabetes.Please have a read around the forum and you will find lots of help and advice here.
 
Its not that I'm not taking it seriously, its just it all seems a bit over my head at the moment. Reading round the forum is still a bit confusing to me, hence the odd question. I'm just glad I've found somewhere I can ask questions without being made to look silly.
 
It takes a while for the diagnosis to sink in, I remember when I was told I am diabetic I thought the doctor is talking about someone else, then went straight into denial. It is all still new to you and it gets confusing too, but dont worry it will get easier as time goes on and you learn more about diabetes and your body.

You have come to the right forum, there are some very knowledgeable people in here and everyone is supportive and will do their best to try and help you along on the path to achieving good control of your condition. So just ask away all you want, dont worry, nobody will think that you are silly.

All the best

Karen
 
Here are a couple of my favourite newbie sites

http://loraldiabetes.blogspot.com/2006/10/d-day.html

http://www.dsolve.com/

I have a friend who is a fellow photographer and is already suffering some eye problems through not taking his diabetes seriously. Unfortunately too many of the Medical Professionals seem to advise badly compared to what we actually DO to achieve control. They tell you to eat lots of carbs and not test because the result will make you depressed. In practice dropping the carbs to the level at which you test as close to normal as you can is about the most undepressing thing you can do.
 
Carbohydrate 101
Carbohydrates are molecules which consist of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms only. the carbon atoms are in chains or rings. A carbohydrate with a 2 carbon chain would be a simple sugar called a diose. I don't know any. A 3 carbon chain is a sugar called a triose and there are some which appear as intermediaries in metabolic pathways. There are some tetroses 4 carbons, pentoses(5) and hexoses(6).And some compounds up to 10 carbons have been synthesised. The best known hexose is glucose, also called dextrose, because it's a right handed version of the molecule. (there is also a laevose, which is left handed and not, as far as I know, biologically active).
All these single carbon chain sugars are called monosaccharides. if 2 monosaccharides bond together, you get a disaccharide. Sucrose, (table sugar) is a disaccharide. as are maltose ( in sprouting grain) and lactose (in milk). There are some trisaccharides, consisting of 3 monosaccharides chemically linked and some tetrasaccharides. the polysaccharides are made up of many monosaccharide units linked, often many hundreds in either straight or branched chains. They include Starch, which we break down to its constituent glucose molecules, after it's been cooked, cellulose, which we cannot break down and call dietary fibre. there are others, but they're only of interest to geeks like me. The important thing to learn is that starches are made up of 100% glucose monomers and break down to maltose or glucose in our metabolic processes to appear as glucose in the blood. this can happen very quickly. Sucrose, incidentally breaks down to glucose and fructose, which is a sugar that doesn't easily turn to glucose and has very little effect on blood glucose levels. There are other issues with it though
Theoretically therefore, 5 grams of table sugar would yield only 2.5 grams of glucose and 5 grams of starch would yield 5 grams of glucose. We can't process the starch unless it's been cooked or treated in some other way to make it accessible to the enzymes we have. We can't break down starch in its natural form.
That in a large cocnutshell is why it's not a good idea to eat anything which consists largely of starch, such as pasta, rice, potatoes and other flour based products.
 
Hi All,

If you want to reduce your carb content in a meal but still want to eat rice and pasta, have you tried the instant microwavable?

Tilda Pilau rice 22.1g CHO per 100g
Dolmio pasta 26g CHO per 100g

The reason they are so low is becasue of the way they are cooked and vigorously washed which removes alot of the starch. Nutritionaly they probably contain a lot less minerals and fibre but they are good for meals the whole family can eat.

Worth a try. Nic.
 
Dreamfield's pasta is lower in carbs too.

Just be careful that you eat what you want first go. If you reheat the pasta the low glycaemic effect is lost.
 
Ah! I love pasta, I have it at lunch every day, with cottage cheese. We have a salad bar and a hot food bar. You can guarantee I won't like/can't eat any of the hot food, so cottage cheese and pasta most days. That puts paid to that then. I suppose I'll have to bring a packed lunch to work now. :cry:
 
I've not cut our pasta or rice, just cutting back on portions at moment to see how I go for now. I have a lunch of cottage cheese and ryvita and normally snak on an orange or a muller light yogurt during the day.
 
Before dx pasta was pretty much my tea time staple and I love it soooo much that i could eat it with nothing on it but garlic, chilli and olive oil.

I still think there is nothing in this world like fresh cooked spaghetti and miss this more than chocolate (only just).

I am also looking at GI of foods but unfortunately despite low GI of pasta, even wholemeal, the carbs are huge. As a type 1 not yet on basal bolus I dont have 'luxury' of covering carbs with insulin if i wanted to and dont even think if I was on b/b that I would return to previous portions so in a way insulin is 'training' me now in terms of portion sizes for when I do change
What I am doing however if I eat it is a tiny portion (tablespoon at absolute most) and eating it with lots veg and cheese to lessen GI though am not sure if this will affect time of spike.
I find that of all the starchy carbs it is the one I can least tolerate - which is a pity cause I was never a big potatoes or rice eater.

Might try Dreamfields though dont want to re establish old habits. Oh, for a cure..................

L
 
I was the same, loved pasta in all forms and this was a real staple of my diet before diagnosis. Dreamfields pasta is very good and tastes almost exactly the same as the rest but much lower in carbs. I only eat it occasionally though because since low carbing I have lost the urge to eat pasta every day. I miss chocolate most of all but low carb megastore do a milk choc bar with only 8.5 cho for a whole 85g bar and it's not half bad. It's hideously expensive though. A real discovery was their apple and cinnamon granola which I have with fresh cream instead of milk. It's really filing and tastes lovely. I have it for lunch as I am not a breakfast eater. I can only manage to force down an oatcake for brekkie.

Caitycakes x
 
Yeah, me too I love the stuff, I could eat it every day which was the reason for the original post. If ever unsure of what to have to eat I'll always look for what I can have with some pasta. I'm afraid its going to be the hardest thing to cut out. I'm going to try the wholemeal stuff and see what thats like. But untill I start testing its all just guess work I suppose. At the moment its just a case of cut back :roll: To be honest I think if I cut out everything all in one go, I'll just crave it all the more. I'm at my worst on days like today when I'm not at work and sat idle in the house, wife at work and I'm bored so eat :roll: Made a big tuna salad for lunch today and having rabbit stew with lots of veg for tea, no pasta in sight, so I am trying :D
 
Let me know what the wholemeal pasta tastes like caveman. I like pasta but as you say it's too moreish to give up. :D
 
I've changed to wholemeal pasta and to me the taste isn't much differant, I enjoyed it.

Right, as to testing, 5.8 before eating, I had wholemeal pasta, turkey mince, peas, carrotts, green beans, leeks, onions, celery and a touch of swede. All but the pasta cooked in together. 4.8 after 2 hours, 4.8 after 3 hours, and still 4.8 now. Now thats not bad when I'm normally 5.1 to 5.5 before breakfast.

Incidently, yesterday I had the above with basmati rice (was just using the rest up tonight) I was 4.9 before eating then 5.7 after 2, 3 and 4 hours.

So it looks like I'm not cutting out rice or pasta :D On the other hand bread or anything with white flour sends me up into the 8s. Similarly potatoes raise me 2 or more.
 
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