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Sugar content of fruit



You want full fat milk, and help with your thyroid. I do hope you're getting thyroid hormone supplements. If you're not, see an endo a.s.a.p! Also, if you want something quick to eat you might want to just go for low or no-carb snacks, because that bar is most likely not doing you any favors either. Go for cheeses (baby bell?), sausages like Bifi's, boiled eggs, pork scratchings (I like 'em with mayo), some extra dark chocolate (not a whole bar, a few squares are usually enough). Forget about sugar allowance, as carbs turn to glucose once ingested, so.... There may be no sugar in pasta, but it sure is carby and will make you spike!

Don't be frustrated with yourself, you're doing what you can with the advice given. Sadly though, it's just bad advice. If you want to go in-depth, read The Diabetes Code by Dr. Jason Fung, or go through the dietdoctor.com website. But the bottom line, anything wheaty/grainy/starchy is too full of carbs to consider healthy for a T2. Avoid potatoes, bread, cereal/porridge/muesli, rice, pasta, corn... And the fruit advice is nonsense. Most fruits are a no-go, save for berries, avocado, tomatoes and starfruit. Everything else is very carby, banana's and other tropical fruits especially so. If you eat a whole lot of vegetables you should be fine where vitamins are concerned, or you could add supplements to make sure.

So you could eat, without issue:
Scrambled eggs with bacon, cheese, mushrooms, tomato, maybe some high meat content sausages?
Eggs with ham, bacon and cheese
Omelet with spinach and/or smoked salmon
Omelet with cream, cinnamon, with some berries and coconut shavings
Full fat Greek yoghurt with nuts and berries
Leafy green salad with a can of tuna (oil, not brine!), mayonaise, capers, olives and avocado
Leafy green salad with (warmed goat's) cheese and bacon, maybe a nice vinaigrette?
Meat, fish or poultry with veggies. I usually go for cauliflower rice or broccoli rice, with cheese and bacon to bulk it up. Never the same meal twice in a row because of various herbs/spices.

Get a meter, and test before a meal and 2 hours after the first bite. If you don't go up more than 2.0 mmol/l, that meal was all good and not too carby. If it's higher, it was more than you could process back out again, and needs adjusting.

That's a lot of info in one go, (sorry, if it's an overload) but I hope it's useful.
Good luck!
Jo
 
Fruit is especially insidious if you don’t understand it. Frructose doesn’t usually raise blood glucose concentration but contributes directly to fatty liver and insulin resistance. That’s its role in our evolution, to make us fatter during summer months.

Fine in moderation if you’re not diabetic, but it’s like kryptonite to many of us here, even we don’t know it or think we can tolerate it based on postprandial readings.
 
Being type 2 myself I know just how hard it is to get a diet plan that suits your needs and taste buds. It took me a few years to get to grips with foods I could eat and those I couldn't - or had to be wary of. Others have already mentioned and advised you on blood testing and you should ask your nurse to provide you with a meter, strips and lancets. I get mine through the National Health, but if you have to get yours privately these things aren't cheap to run. However, blood testing is the only way forward if you you want to experiment with foods that suit suit your diabetes. We all have the same disease but react to it differently. The three killers for me are pasta, rice and potatoes. If I have rice at all it is now measured by the teaspoonful, potatoes are a now-and-then treat if I go to a carvery for a roast. I think cutting out carbs completely isn't a good thing, but cutting way down on them is. When I have carbs it is usually in the form of a measured portion of cereal, fruit and plain yoghurt for breakfast, a Pizza eaten at lunchtime (not evenings), two slices of homemade wholemeal bread for lunch, etc. I don't eat carbs after 2pm. Evening meals consist of meat and a few green vegetables. Happily I can eat roasted carrots and parsnips without my BG numbers going through the roof. Low carb diets will give you the opportunity to lose some weight (I have lost 2.5 stone in 18 months) and get your blood sugars almost to normal. My last A1c was 43, just one point off being normal. All this takes time, experimentation and keeping daily records of your BG count. After a while this will become a habit and part of your daily routine. Good luck. There are plenty of people here who will attest to a low carb diet (eat a measured amount of carbs during the early part of the day only) and in truth, everyone can be successful at applying it.
 
You mention needing snacks sometimes. Could you keep a bag of nuts handy for those times? No sugar, no carb and fill you up fast.
 
As others have said, it is a good idea to invest in a meter. There is also a booked called 'Carbs and Cals' which is very handy for a quick glance at how many carbs are in each food (easily available on Amazon). Good luck!
 
Antje77 said:
Wait, what? are you saying eating an apple, for instance, usually doesn't raise bg?
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No no no

The glucose does, but the fructose portion usually does not. It is transported straight to the liver and not metabolised by any other cells. If the liver decides that you already have sufficient glucose in the bloodstream, which invariably you will have if you’re an insulin resistant diabetic, then the fructose, rather than being converted to glucose, is converted to fat and deposited right there inside the liver, thus contributing directly to fatty liver. From our evolutionary perspective, the role of fructose in nature is to temporarily increase insulin resistance so that we can lay down seasonal fat. We can then oxidise this fat during the winter months and burn the resulting ketones for fuel.

With that in mind, whilst an apple may or may not cause an individual’s blood glucose concentration to rise out of range postprandial, the fructose portion is almost certainly, invisibly, insidiously, contributing to exasperated insulin resistance
 
Jim Lahey said:
With that in mind, whilst an apple may or may not cause an individual’s blood glucose concentration to rise out of range postprandial
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For me, it doesn't, as I use apples als my hypo treatment when not very low. I won't eat them when not hypo except for a small stolen bite now and again when feeding the guinea pigs. They don't seem to mind if their apples are partly eaten
 
Antje77 said:
For me, it doesn't, as I use apples als my hypo treatment when not very low. I won't eat them when not hypo except for a small stolen bite now and again when feeding the guinea pigs. They don't seem to mind if their apples are partly eaten
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Yeah. In that instance - lower than baseline - I think the liver will probably reconstruct much of the fructose to glucose and send it out into the bloodstream. As always though I’m sure there are nuances and sliding scales. Nothing much seems binary in biology.
 
I sympathise as I have an underactive thyroid as well as T2 diagnosed Sept 2016. I've yo-yo dieted all my life bur have always been a grazer. I have been doing a LFHP diet but lost next to nothing, certainly for the sacrifices I've had to make! I briefly tried the LCHF way but it goes against my years of dieting theory and was quite hard to stick to. Like you, my wholemeal toast / porridge breakfast spikes my blood sugar, so reluctantly I'm gonna have to give the Low Carbing another try. I still find it hard to get advice, some say "everything is ok in moderation", even cereals, potatoes, rice, pasta.. But then diabetic websites are definitely pushing the LCHF way, who do you listen to?!
Also I'm slightly puzzled by your reference to underactive thyroid - is that affected by food intake? This has never been mentioned to me on any of my GP visits.


 
Spiderjo said:
I still find it hard to get advice, some say "everything is ok in moderation", even cereals, potatoes, rice, pasta.. But then diabetic websites are definitely pushing the LCHF way, who do you listen to?!
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I listen to fellow diabetics. They have all been there and bought the porridge, eaten the bananas and regretted it. Real life experience in what does and doesn't work is paramount. I put their advice way above the advice doled out by people with vested interests and doctors that blindly follow that advice because they are, in the main, not diabetic themselves.

It is also worthy of note that the same high carb low fat advice has been doled out for decades, and look what has happened ...... a diabetes epidemic and doctors that insist diabetes (T2) is progressive and will always require medication, eventually insulin.
 
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Couldn't agree more! My brother became Type 1 in 1960 and the dietary advice then was low carb, high protein/fat (meat, eggs, cheese, cream etc). Years later when I became diabetic the advice was fruit, starchy and other veg etc. What had happened? the fallacy of fat is bad, carbs are good ("just increase your insulin dose") is what had happened. For me, any fruit or unadulterated fruit juice/smoothie is a sure fire way for my BG to go higher than 20mM in 30 minutes or less. Fructose is as active as glucose for my metabolism.
 

Definitely not an overload of info. Just printed it out into my book. It’s great to have a “ go to “ list. I’m doing a big cook up here today to trying to get a few meals in front so that I don’t struggle with what options to have. Just found the soups and stews thread. Interesting that a lot of the recipes contained carrots as I thought they were too high in starches to use.
 
Carrots are 7 grams per 100, potatoes 15. Guess they're okay when used in moderation. I don't anymore, because it adds up too fast on keto, but on "regular" LCHF they should be fine.
 
I suppose the trick is to find a diabetic GP. There must be some out there.
 
Spiderjo said:
I still find it hard to get advice, some say "everything is ok in moderation", even cereals, potatoes, rice, pasta.. But then diabetic websites are definitely pushing the LCHF way, who do you listen to?!
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Mainly to my meter. It clearly tells me what different foods do to my blood sugar.
 
I eat a lot of fruit. Always have and my sugar is very well controlled. You have to see what’s right for your body. Do not just remove fruit as it will make you crave it.

It’s more how much do you move to burn the sugars from fruit.
 
Griffomarkii said:
I eat a lot of fruit. Always have and my sugar is very well controlled. You have to see what’s right for your body. Do not just remove fruit as it will make you crave it.

It’s more how much do you move to burn the sugars from fruit.
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I thought it was about fructose being processed differently to other sugars and potentially adding to fatty liver disease and therefore insulin resistance more than a direct impact here and now on blood sugars.
 
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