It’s the dose, not the poison

Don’t dig your grave with your fork and knife.

English proverb

While you shouldn’t base your whole treatment strategy on the glycemic index (GI), it’s helpful to determine which foods are more likely to spike your blood sugar. Many diabetics avoid high GI foods altogether and eat from the lower range of the spectrum. Some fruits that are excellent blood sugar spikers have a low GI, so as an eating guide, you should take it with a pinch of salt.

A number that is better to look at is the glycemic load, as it also takes into consideration how much of a specific food you are eating. It’s calculated by:

Glycemic load = (GI x Carbohydrate content in grams) / 100

In other words, if you eat twice the amount, the glycemic load doubles, and a spike in blood sugar is more likely. All carbohydrates, even the branch-chained slower-releasing ones in broccoli, turn into glucose in the end and enter your blood. We just rarely eat enough of them in one hit to make it a concern.

Another factor is fat, which slows down the absorption rate of carbs in the food we eat. It can lead to a delayed or slower release of glucose into the blood.

This is what made me try potato salad on a low carb diet. I was curious about what a small amount of potato combined with a lot of fat would do to my blood sugar. I hadn’t eaten potatoes in over a year since I had big problems with them during my early diabetes days. The glycemic index score for a boiled potato is 78, which makes it a high GI food. It gets even worse if you mash it and break up the starch-bonds.

To my delight, the potato salad experiment went well. I saw flat glucose graphs or tiny bumps. The recipe was simple: never more than a hundred grams of potatoes mixed with half a spring onion and a couple of tablespoons of homemade mayonnaise. Pre-bolus the insulin by thirty minutes and don’t go over 25g of carbs. The potato was back on the menu. Of course, I got brave and added in more potatoes – hot potatoes, crushed potatoes, and so on. It didn’t work. But I’m happy with my potato salad. It also taught me a lesson: what matters is the dose, not the poison.