Type 1 Salad foods

[gollymax]

Hi everyone, I’ve been a T1 for 57 years, I’m getting a bit confused with some of the Salad foods when counting Carbohydrates in Cucumber, Rocket lettuce leaf.
The Carbs & Calorie Counter Book edition 6 states 40g of weight =0 Carbs, 80g & 120g of weight =1G of Carbs
When I google Cucumber I find that a weight of 100g of Cucumber = 3.5g of Carbs.

I also look at Rocket leafs (lettuce) to find the book states the weights of 20g 40g & 80g =0 Carbs

My wife buys a 80g Packet of Rocket leafs from Asda food store for me, when I look at the packet of Rocket leafs it states the packet contains 1.5G of Carbs for the whole packet.

The reason I’m asking these questions is because I’m on an insulin pump and I’m in the process of doing some fasting tests.

So this is where I get a bit confused when the book tell you one thing, the internet tells you something different & the packet food tells you something different again.
I went on a pump training course & the DSN said you can eat Rocket leafs as they have no carbs whilst you are doing your fasting tests.

I wonder how many people have come across the same problem?

 

[Engineer88]

The difference is due the absorbability of some carbs ie those in Fiber. you cant digest it but it is there so its shown on the packet but not in carbs and cals because you probably wouldn't want to do insulin for it. (probably 99.9% of diabetics wont)

Long and short, don't do insulin but also don't eat while basal testing at all. protein and fat will skew your test just the same as carbs.

 

[Deleted Account]

The number of carbs in something can vary. For cakes, for example, you may get a slice with more currants than the next person.
For "natural food" there are many things which can affect the carbs: the soil it was grown in, how ripe it is, the species, ...
And some books/websites include fibre and some don't (usually in the Uk, we do not include fibre but we may inadvertently go to a US website).

The only way of telling exactly how much carbs there are in food is to burn it and then weigh the resulting carbon.
But this doesn't help if you want to eat it.

Therefore, all carb counting is an approximation. And, considering there are other things like exercise and stress which affects our BG, these approximations are not too bad.

I think most people do not eat anything for the time of their basal tests.