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Simple sugars vs starches (or, why does chocolate go better for me than grains?)

Glink

Well-Known Member
Messages
252
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
I've been LCHF for almost a year, and am now on metformin and experimenting to see if I can have a little more carb in my diet again (still low carb according to most plans, but not ridiculously restrictive like I have been <50g/day). One thing I've been confused by now and in the past is that I seem to be able to slip a little bit of actual sugar (or maple syrup) in, but a little bit of grain or potato leads to spikes in my blood glucose. I can't imagine why this could be the case--shouldn't refined sugar be worse for me than bread or rice? Both are eaten in measured quantities, as I am testing, but I expected the sugar (like a bit of chocolate or salt-licorice) to spike my glucose levels; this hasn't seemed to happen much with these small amounts, but a similar amount of carbs in whole wheat bread does me in. Can anyone explain this? It's so confusing!
 
I've always eaten "healthy" (as in whole grains & veggies), and never had much of a sweet tooth. Sad that starch is so killer on me now, because I loved my grains! I'd love a nice slice of homemade bread, while candy or soda don't appeal.

I read that article, but I've never been obese or even overweight so I'm not sure it applies to my situation. However, perhaps it's possible that there may be thin people with the same genetic issue--just manifesting as lack of BS control rather than weight gain?
 
I've always eaten "healthy" (as in whole grains & veggies), and never had much of a sweet tooth. Sad that starch is so killer on me now, because I loved my grains! I'd love a nice slice of homemade bread, while candy or soda don't appeal.

I read that article, but I've never been obese or even overweight so I'm not sure it applies to my situation. However, perhaps it's possible that there may be thin people with the same genetic issue--just manifesting as lack of BS control rather than weight gain?

Some years ago, I was investigating diet, relating to a post-viral, poly-arthritic condition affecting me at that time. As I preferred to keep meds to the minimum, I saw a herbalist, who suggested I look at some of the acidic things I was eating. My knee-jerk reaction was "but they're my favourites"; things like oranges, tomatoes as examples. Her suggestion was that sometimes our dietary preferences are actually driven by intolerances, and we can increasingly favour some foods because rejecting them leads to a form of withdrawal. Thus, whilst x food might make us "feel great", it could be we are compelled to eat it, to keep the "fix" up.

Now, I'm not sure I've explained that at all eloquently, but the more I rerad about carb addiction, and carb flu, the more it makes sense.

For completeness, at the time, I eliminates those acidic foods (and drinks) from my diet and matters eased. Of course, being virus related, they may have eased over time anyway, but I'll never know.

Thinking back to that theory helped my focus on my testing when I started off, taking particular interest in my favoured foods. It held up to quite a large degree, but like all intolerances, sometimes we can tolerate a little bit, but a bigger bit seem to tip the balance.

Sadly, it's all a game with no easy answer, aside from testing, testing, testing, recording results and lots of experimentation, over a period.

Good luck with it all.
 
I find that I can eat chocolate in reasonably small amounts and the occasional ice cream with little reaction and any rise comes down very quickly but a slice of bread or a few chips is toxic and sends my BG through the roof and takes 6 to 8 hours to come back down.
 
I've been thinking about this a lot recently....................surely you would expect 10 grams of starch to have twice the effect on blood glucose as 10 grams of pure sugar, because starch is just glucose, whereas sugar is half fructose, and fructose has no effect on blood glucose (but may have bad effects elsewhere). That certainly fits with my experience.............2 slices of toast (40g carbs) sends my blood glucose higher than a 70g bar of chocolate (with 40g of sugar = 20g of glucose)

Is this discussed anywhere else on the low carb forum? When people are carb counting, due they only count 1 gram of sucrose as 1/2 gram of carbs? Should they?
 
I've been thinking about this a lot recently....................surely you would expect 10 grams of starch to have twice the effect on blood glucose as 10 grams of pure sugar, because starch is just glucose, whereas sugar is half fructose, and fructose has no effect on blood glucose (but may have bad effects elsewhere). That certainly fits with my experience.............2 slices of toast (40g carbs) sends my blood glucose higher than a 70g bar of chocolate (with 40g of sugar = 20g of glucose)

Is this discussed anywhere else on the low carb forum? When people are carb counting, due they only count 1 gram of sucrose as 1/2 gram of carbs? Should they?
This is quite a useful meta-analysis (http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/35/7/1611) of multiple feeding trials with Fructose, Sucrose and in one case also comparing starch. It links through to a fairly large array of studies in this area and is worth a read, as it highlights that for most of the studies, Fructose had limited effect on blood glucose levels, however, there were a few people that it did cause an increase for.

This meta-analysis (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2682989/) looks at the effects on triglycerides of fructose and it's fairly conclusively bad!

Interestingly, @Jasperville, on your comparison of toast versus chocolate, toast with butter has a far lower fat content than chocolate (toast being about 3% fat on its own, and with butter getting nowhere near the 30% that chocolate has), so you will have two effects going on. One will be linked to the amount converted to glucose and the other to the absorption rate connected with fats content.

Speaking as a type 1, when dosing insulin, I dose insulin equally for both the 40g of sugar in a chocolate bar as for the 40g of total carbs in the two slices of bread.
 
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