The whole meal bread myth

[hanadr]

Wholemeal bread is often cited as better for diabetics than white bread. BUT is it?
GI tables tell you how fast the glucose produced from a food hits your blood. The GI number for white bread is 70. Wholemeal is 69.( glucose is 100) As to total carbs
White bread is 49% available carb and wholemeal is 42%
What that means is that the difference between the two is marginal. Granary bread is probably not much better. Only breads which are reduced carb or specifically made from a low carb recipe, are truly "safe". that includes the "diet" breads, like Nimble and weight watchers and Fergus's recipe. German black rye bread is lower in carbs, but not low.
The differences betweeen white and brown rice are of a similar order.
among the grains, only Quinoa is a bit lower, not particularly low (56%)
Of course portion size is important here. A tinyportion of even a high carb food is still low carb consumption

 

[Trinkwasser]

Agreed. For me wheat in any form is exceptionally spike-inducing, even wheat bran. I can do some wholemeal bread in the evening with the meal as long as there aren't many other carbs in it.

Some people may be able to get away with lower GI forms of starch, I can do oatcakes even at breakfast and ryebread during the day, in sufficiently small quantities, and despite the GI tables quinoa hardly affects my BG whereas brown white and basmati rice all come in about the same.

To some extent that's down to your particular pancreatic output, mine doesn't produce Phase 1 insulin but my Phase 2 is still pretty good so as long as I don't overdo the quantities I can get away with even pizza - the fat slows down the glycemic response.

About the only genuine benefits of eating grains are beta-glucans, plus a certain amount of fibre with unprocessed grains. You can gain far more nutritional benefits from dumping them in favour of larger quantities of more nutritious things.

 

[tubolard]

Hanadr,

In my case I was advised to avoid white and wholemeal bread and switch to whole grain.

Further to this post I tried Burgen's Soya and Linseed (11.4g/slice) again, it has a GI of 36 but two slices of that (without jam!) sent my bloods higher than if I'd had the equivalent in whole grain at 18.2g/slice. It has been pointed out to me that my portion sizes could have been smaller. In theory the lower carb content of two slices of Burgen's should have affected me less than two slices of wholegrain, having said that the glycemic load (carbs * GI/100) of Burgen's is higher than that of the whole grain bread.

Recent experience with pizza shows that two slices of ham and mushroom topped pizza will send my BG higher than two slices of vegetable (pepper and onions) topped pizza.

Now here's another oddity, had two wholemeal chapattis with mince/courgette/mushrooms over the weekend, I was 6.3 30 minutes before dinner, and 5.9 2 hours after (I double checked and was 5.8 6 minutes later).

Now I'm having a terrible day, forgot to take a metformin with lunch, and after a vegetable soup saw my BG go up to 7.8 which made me unhappy Back down to 5.3 now, much happier

Regards, Tubs.

Edited at 19:30 to report happiness with the world

 

[hanadr]

Are chapattis made with wheat flour or pea flour?

 

[tubolard]

wheat flour

 

[Dr. Nic]

Hi.

The low carb breads I usually buy from Tesco or Asda are Vogel (Soya and Linseed, 11g CHO per slice) and Burgen (soya and linseed 10g CHO per slice or cranberry ~15g per slice).

My husband likes them becasue he can eat quite a few slices and give himslef the same amount of insulin for compared to more carbohydratey breads. The slices are roughly the same size as regular bread, so he doesn't get funny looks at work and they are really filling becasue of the soya flour. They are also reasonably priced!

I know both these breads are only slightly lower in carbs compared to regular white or wholemeal but surely "every little helps", and the sugar release is slower.

They are worth trying, very nice with Wholeearth peanut butter and a sprinkle of seeds!!