Which foods MUST I avoid at all costs

i know it will be better unless you eat those taties lol

Andy12345 said:

i know it will be better unless you eat those taties lol

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I wanted to see what they would do to my bs - it's all about testing

yes always good to know, ive done similar, for example we was stuck on the motorway one night late home and the kids where starving so i treated the burger king as a test lol, never again

That information is great Andy, thanks. Just what I've been looking for; a 'normal' day's eating. I know everyone is different but I needed a platform to start from.

After reading your guidelines, I'm going shopping today... Berries and Greek Yoghurt.

Nice one Andy, thanks for sharing this. Sounds almost like a "normal" diet to me so clearly I am more extreme. Only thing is, I love yoghurt...I could eat it by the potful (and I mean a large pot). And I don't do low fat either. I have recently weaned myself off milk and gone over to cream (again full fat). I am loving nuts, olives, cheese, eggs and flaxseed etc. I do miss pots and pizza and have a bit of these only occasionally. Like you, I think of food as fuel and only "top up" as required. I do intermittent fasting and have now trained my mind to switch off thinking about food until such time when I'm preparing it and come to enjoy it more than ever. I juice sometimes but knowing this raises BS quickly, have a shot of cider vinegar beforehand. I don't get time to exercise at the gym (or even much at all) so I am taking for ever losing weight.

Well done BTW

avoid jams and syrups as very high in carbs and long acting peanuts are low level carbs but slow release good for keeping levels from bottoming you can't avoid carbs as basically your body and brain needs this fuel to function

bluehorse said:

I have been reading about avoiding foods that are high in sugar and high in carbs and I am slightly confused; some websites says swap white bread for brown bread but some websites say don't eat any bread because it all increases blood sugar levels.

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Although those two pieces of advice seem contradictory, there is a sound reason behind them.

White bread, made from white flour, has more or less the same glycaemic response curve as sugar. Eating white bread will affect your BG levels as sure as eating granulated sugar by the spoonful. Brown bread however is a vague term, essentially meaningless in the UK.

Bread which is made from flour which contains the entire contents of the whole grain is a lot more than just the highly refined endosperm found in white flour. For example, some of the carbohydrates are cellulose based and indigestible. We call it roughage or dietary fibre. Whole grain flour also contains more complex carbohydrates which take much longer to break down than the highly refined white flour. The result of this is that it takes a lot longer for the carbs to be digested and your insulin has longer to act upon it. The result is a very different glycaemic response curve:



However, most bread in the UK, even though it is described as wholemeal or wholegrain, is not. Waitrose's wholemeal bread contains only 6% wholemeal and 51% white flour. It also contains 43% of other things!

Essentially the only way you can trust bread to be wholemeal is to bake it yourself or find a baker who bakes real bread. Be careful though because a lot of them do things like add molasses to the mix.

Real Bread Finder

Do what works for you but make sure it's working by testing your BGs especially in the first few months after diagnosis. Just passed my 2nd year since diagnosis and thoroughly enjoy my lchf regime. Last 18 months of quarterly hba1c results have been in the 4.7 to 4.9 range and my lipid profile meets all NICE guidelines. Lost 4 stone in 6 months on lchf. I started out doing around 50g of carbs a day but now I'm a bit more tolerant and average about 100g per day.

Daibell said:

Hi. This is a list of foods (carbs) which do contribute to an increase in blood glucose. Sugar, bread, potatoes, pasta and rice; there are others. You don't need to stop these just reduce portion sizes and go for low-GI versions to smooth & reduce absorption. Yes, wholegrain lightly processed flour is the best basis rather than highly refined white flour.

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Some people find little difference between "wholegrain" and "white". Hence the importance of testing.
Nor is it wise to assume that "wholegrain" is any less processed than "white". Especially if you are buying a highly processed product such as bread or pasta.

Sugar is the biggest offender so avoid products with added sugar.

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It isn't anywhere that simple. Starches (amylose & amylopectin mixtures) actually contain the largest proportion of glucose, 111.1% by mass, of any glucose containing carbohydrate humans can digest. With enzymes to hydrolase alpha glucose polysaccharides present in human saliva.
In comparison sucrose (along with lactose) is only 52.5% glucose with sucrase (and lactase) only produced in the small intestine.

Thus the title of "worst offenders" more properly belongs to the yellow third of "The Eatwell Plate".

The "total carbohydrate" is generally a far more useful metric when it comes to food labels than "sugars". Especially where the information to work out what actual carbohydrates are present is not there.

The amount you need to reduce carbs will depend on what a glucose meter tells you. People have different degrees/stages of diabetes hence the different guidance you will see in the posts. With regard to fat, it doesn't increase blood sugar by much and can help slow down carb absorption. You don't need to have high fat as such but enough to give you the calories you need with reduced carbs. Bear in mind that the (in)famous 'Eat Well Plate' suggests too much calorie intake.

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Even if you believe the idea of "calories". The usual maxim for any LCHF diet is "eat when hungry". Which is also a heresy to most of the dietary establishment.

Yorksman said:

Although those two pieces of advice seem contradictory, there is a sound reason behind them.

White bread, made from white flour, has more or less the same glycaemic response curve as sugar. Eating white bread will affect your BG levels as sure as eating granulated sugar by the spoonful. Brown bread however is a vague term, essentially meaningless in the UK.

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Even if the curve was the same shape there is considerably more glucose in the bread. So it would cause a greater rise.
In practice the curve is unlikely to be the same since white bread is high GI, whereas sucrose is medium GI.

Bread which is made from flour which contains the entire contents of the whole grain is a lot more than just the highly refined endosperm found in white flour. For example, some of the carbohydrates are cellulose based and indigestible. We call it roughage or dietary fibre. Whole grain flour also contains more complex carbohydrates which take much longer to break down than the highly refined white flour.

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Complexity of carbohydrates is not a factor in digestion of carbohydrates.
The most complex, amylopectin, is very quick and easy to digest. Amylose, the next most complex, is rather "interesting". Depending on the exact physical form of the molecule it can either be a little harder to digest than amylopectin or a type of fibre. Maltodextrins are also quick and easy to digest (indeed they produced as an intermediate product of the digestion of either amylopectin or amylose.)
Galactan hydrolises to galactose in an acid (or alkaline) environment.

Which other "complex carbohydrates" do you think the human digestive system is able to hydrolyse? Any which can't be are, by definition, "fibre".

With disaccharides maltose will be hydrolysed before sucrose or lactose. Glucose, fructose and galactose don't need any digestion.

However, most bread in the UK, even though it is described as wholemeal or wholegrain, is not. Waitrose's wholemeal bread contains only 6% wholemeal and 51% white flour. It also contains 43% of other things!

Essentially the only way you can trust bread to be wholemeal is to bake it yourself or find a baker who bakes real bread.

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You'd also need to check if your "wholegrain flour" actually is what you think it is. (Remember that most "whole milk" is actually skimmed milk with cream added back in...)

Be careful though because a lot of them do things like add molasses to the mix.

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Which may reduce the GI. Adding "sugar" a "starchy food" can do this. Since it means there will, in effect, be less glucose per unit mass of the resultant mix. This would be most effective if the sugar was fructose or galactose. But still significent with sucrose or lactose. (Possibly detectable using glucose or maltose.) Obvious looking at the chemistry. But appears to surprise quite a few people. But then so does the fact that "starch" is made up of lots of glucose molecules packed together. Which is why these kind of foods tend to be "worst than sugar" from the diabetic POV. Since all glucose in the gut goes into the blood. Regardless of if started out as "just glucose" or part of maltose, sucrose; lactose; amylose or amylopectin. (In contrast fructose and galactose get removed, from the blood, very quickly by the liver.)

I avoid anything tha t I've found through self test puts my blood sugars up by more than 5 points. I am careful about things I know put it up between 3.5 and 5 and pretty relaxed about the rest

mpe said:

Which other "complex carbohydrates" do you think the human digestive system is able to hydrolyse? Any which can't be are, by definition, "fibre".

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Why do you exclude fibre? I don't. Most of the abundant foodstuffs in the form of grass plants is fibre. Humans of course have lost their ability to digest any of the cellulose but we still do find these complex carbohydrates in whole grains, in the husks. Why ignore them?

However, your comment:

mpe said:

With disaccharides maltose will be hydrolysed before sucrose or lactose. Glucose, fructose and galactose don't need any digestion.

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suggests that you are also completely ignoring the beta carbs, including things like beta glucose, which we cannot digest. As with the cellulose based carbs, beta carbs require enzymes which we simply do not produce**. Nor are the foods which contain these saccharides of minor importance. Next to grasses, they are one of the most widespread and ancient foodstuffs. Oligosacchardies are a major component of pulses and are broken down by bacteria in the intestine and not by enzymes in the stomache. They take longer to digest, are only partially digested and belong to the lowest GI foods. That's why they typically give you wind.

The danger of seeing all carbohydrates as either fibre, alpha monosaccharides or alpha disacchardies and then ignoring the fibre, thus essentially limiting all foods to simple or simpler sugars and then drawing conclusions from them, is an oversimplification. If you wish to have a discussion about the many different types of digestive enzymes, their role in metabolising the many monossacharides, disacchardies, polysaccharides in both alpha and beta forms as well as celluoses and hemicelluloses and the several types of carbs found in things like wholegrain flours, I suggest you do it in private for fear of boring the readers to tears. Bluehorse asked a simple question about seemingly contradictory statements about brown and white bread. I aimed to give an explantion as to the apparant contradiction in bite sized chunks, that's all.

** One exception that springs to mind is the enzyme lactase required to digest the beta disaccharide lactose, or milk sugar. Most humans do not produce it in adulthood. Infants produce it naturally because they have to be able to digest mother's milk but production is switched off during puberty. Dairy cultures in Africa, Northern Europe and India and the camel milk culture of nomadic pastoralists in Arabia all continue to produce it each by genetic mutation which is unique to their region, for example via nucleotide substitution of cytosine by thymine at 13910 kB in northern europe it is and of guanine by adenine at 22018 kB in Africa. The majority of humans who do not produce the lactase enzyme simply do not metabolise this simple sugar.

i understand everything being said here.... yup every word.... honest

Andy12345 said:

i understand everything being said here.... yup every word.... honest

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Never mind that, have you done your tax return? Only 30 days to go and power cuts on the last day are no excuse for not getting it in.

Do your BG levels go up during the filling out of a tax return or is that just your BP?

Yorksman said:

Never mind that, have you done your tax return? Only 30 days to go and power cuts on the last day are no excuse for not getting it in.

Do your BG levels go up during the filling out of a tax return or is that just your BP?

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nope thats the accountants job lol.... they both go up when i get his bill though

ok im confused the dietician i seen told me pasta was ok because it releases its sugars slowly when it digests and wont really have that much effect on blood sugar levels

dosent surprise me, next time you see your dietician, make sure your passing them in your car, you can wave hello, and your diet will be better for it

now wheres that "I hate dieticians" smiley?

The only way to know how pasta affects your blood sugars is to test ,if you dont have a monitor yet try to get one from your GP otherwise I would definately sugest buying one and test before you eat and 2 hours after Most people find pasta a no no but we are all different thats why we test

i guess i will just have to see i have already been given a agamatrix been able to keep my levels to around 6 with a spike of 11 today usualy 2 hours after my afternoon snack unfortunatly i think it was the seeded malt loaf that caused that one i usualy eat white but am trying to find a alternative considering i have been only managing my diet for 2 days i think thats ok.