Smoothies

i have done this a couple of times and just limited that amount of apple juice i added to it. my readings were showing higher than normal but it was what i thought would happen as fruit puts sugar up and its just that but in a liquid. the last time i had some i took some insuling about 20mins before hand to cover it so i had some insulin ready for it. not sure if thats a good way to do it or not but it kinda worked for me :lol:

I have made green smoothies consisting mostly of spinach and romaine lettuce, some celery, cucumber, coriander leaves, one small banana and one small apple, plus water to make about 1.5 itres of smoothie which is enough for two days. It didn't spike me at all and 2 hours later had BG in low 5's. It tasted like cr*p to be honest, but it kept me feeling very full for most of the day. second time I made it I put some worcester and tabasco sauce and a little salt and pepper and was much better, almost like a gazpacho. next time I make it I will substitute an avocado for the banana.

Fruit smoothies I can't tolerate at all, massive spikes which takes forever to come down

You should be aware that the more processed any foodstuff is the faster that the carbs will hit your system, so any fruit or vegetables that are blitzed into smoothies will be very high on the GI scale, much higher than they would be eaten as whole fruits or veg, in fact pretty much all the fibre is going to be reduced to pulp if not removed altogether.

It also takes a lot of fruit to make a small glass of smoothie....

I understand what you are saying about the absorption rates Sid, but thats only true for ingredients that contain the simple sugars such as fructose, sucrose or galactose, which all release pretty quickly anyway. Mechanical processing of more complex carbs which does not involve heating them will not affect their release rates, the complexity comes from the long chain molecules binding the sugars and you are not going to loosen those bonds up with just a blender! Basically a chopped up salad is going to be fine no matter how finely you chop it!

Hale, it only tasted like **** because I forgot to spice it, and I the fact I really wanted to eat a KFC with all the trimmings at the time may have been a slight factor also

Savoury smoothies - there are some very nice low GI Gazpacho smoothie recipes out there on t'internet, thinking of making one myself for this weeks ultra low calorie days. Btw, lidl have an amazingly good tomato juice which does not affect my bg much at all, might try whizzing a litre of that up with some cucumber, spring onions, red peppers, cucumber and avocado. Oh, and maybe sling a chiili in also. Bears like spicy.