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Total sugar (added and natural)

S

Student_of_life

Newbie
Messages
4
Type of diabetes
Type 2
hi, i am newly diagnosed as type 2 and just starting to monitor sugar intake etc using myfitnesspal. This is telling me today that I have consumed 49g of suagar, which sounds high to me. Is it? Looking into where this is coming from, it's a half glass of cranberry juice 17g (added, I assume) and an apple 16g (natural), I don't really want to remove either of these from my diet. The rest of the sugars ar such small amounts and natural so I think I am not concerned by them.
I am confused by what the total daily sugar intake should be, help.
 
I wouldn't bother to look at the sugars at all, natural or processed.
I just look at the carbs, because they all end up as sugar in the blood no matter what they look like on the label. Even slow release carbs like wholewheat just dump their sugars a bit more slowly, but they get there in the end.

Are you testing? If you have a meter you quickly see that equal grams of carbs in a glass of fruit juice and a slice of brown bread have almost identical effects on the blood glucose. The bread may be slower by just a few mins.
 
Hi and welcome to the forums @Student_of_life ,

If you don't already know, then you need to understand that the body turns all carbohydrates into glucose. So when you look at nutrition labels, forget the 'of which sugars' bit, it doen't mean anything to us. Count the total carbs instead.

As to the correct amount, you must decide for yourself. 260g per day is the reference intake, I eat around 120g and some forum members are below 50g per day.
 
You do need to test though to see how your carbs consumption impacts on your glucose levels - which are far more important to us as diabetics than eating (or being happy with eating) certain quantities of carbohydrates. So do get yourself a meter, and use your test results to guide you in how many you (should) eat.

Robbity
 
You could ask your GP or D if they will supply you with a meter some do ,but if not then the codefree from home health is the best on cost

CAROL
 
Student_of_life said:
Do you have any advise on a good, simple one to use?
Click to expand...

A lot of us use this one

http://homehealth-uk.com/product-category/blood-glucose/blood-glucose-monitor/

Mainly to do with the test strips being much more reasonably priced than most others.. I last paid £5.20 per box of 50 when I bought 500. There are discount codes you can use to get bulk discounts. The monitors that are free often have much more expensive strips and none of them seem to be interchangeable..
 
I'd agree with @bulkbiker's recommendation although I don't use the Codefree! It probably has the cheapest test strips - a major consideration as these are the biggest running cost in testing.

Robbity
 
Hi. If I were you I would choose the cranberry juice that has no added sugar (the Light version). It's worth avoiding any product where you can that has added sugar as it's an empty carb i.e. has no fibre or food value beyond the excess carbs most of us already have.
 
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