Tag: Keto

Blood Glucose Testing of Whole Foods: Initial Results & Request for Suggestions

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This post is an update on my experiments measuring the effect of low-carb foods and dietary supplements on blood sugar.

I’m still working my way through whole foods, but it’s going to take a while to get through them all.

In the meantime, I wanted to share my preliminary results and see if anyone has suggestions/requests for what I should include.

If you have any whole foods you like or would like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM.

Testing Queue:

Whole Foods

For the last several months I’ve been testing the blood glucose impact of tons of different low-carb prepared foods and ingredients. While those tests have been very informative and uncovered a number of surprises (especially around what fibers do/don’t impact my blood glucose), most of what I eat is food I prepare myself using regular meats, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

Given that I wanted to test the blood glucose impact of regular foods and see how it compares to the macronutrients (total carbs, net carbs, protein, etc.). Towards that end, I’m going to test as many low-carb foods as I can, then see if I can determine any consistent trends.

So far, I’ve tested 15 foods from 4 categories:

The initial results have been pretty interesting. Here are the key insights:

  • All foods tested so far we very low BG impact, so the nutrition labels must be accurate and all of the fibers must be relatively indigestible.
  • The vegetables were the lowest impact per gram, largely due to being such a high percentage water. I was really shocked by how much I could eat (250g mushrooms, 434g celery).
    • If you look at BG impact per calorie, of course, then trend flips around with meat, fish, and nuts having much lower impact than vegetables.
  • I was also pleasantly surprised by how much I could eat of the lowest carb fruits. Raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries were pretty similar to meats on a per gram basis (though not per calorie). I think I’ll start trying adding some in to recipes in small quantities.
  • The zero carb foods (lupini, sacha inchi, salmon, tuna, pork cracklings) still had a noticeable BG impact, presumably coming from the protein content. Once I have more data, I’ll try to fit a model for BG impact as a function of carbs, protein, and fat. It will be interesting to see if there are any interaction effects.

As mentioned above, there’s some many different foods to test, it’s going to take me a while to get a comprehensive set tested. Once I do, I’ll post a full update with a more detail analysis.

In the meantime, since I’ve gotten such great recommendations from the readers, I wanted to solicit suggestions for additional foods to add to this study.

If you have any whole foods you like or would like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM.

I’ll test all the requests over the next couple weeks and post the results.


– QD

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Low-Carb Flour Replacements: Blood Glucose Testing of 18 Varieties with Some Surprising Results

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This post is an update on my experiments measuring the effect of low-carb foods and dietary supplements on blood sugar.

This week, I have the results from low-carb flour replacements. Next up will be whole foods (meats, vegetables, seeds & nuts, etc.).

Testing Queue:

Flour Replacements

Summary

When making low-carb baked goods, I find that the most difficult ingredient to replace is flour. Flour provides bulk, absorbs water, and binds ingredients together, creating the structure of most baked goods. Unfortunately, flour is ~75% starch by weight with a glycemic index of 70, resulting in an extremely high impact on blood sugar.

Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of low-carb replacements for flour available, mostly almond flour, coconut flour, and resistant starches. Similar to other low-carb products, a ton of new flour replacements have hit the market in the last few years. As always, the net carb counts look good, but I wanted to test them to see if they really hold up (see evidence of blood glucose impact of dietary fibers here & here).

Between my own searching and reader recommendations (1, 2, 3), Foods. I tested 18 flours from 6 different categories (grouped by main ingredient). Here’s my overall conclusions:

  • Most Similar to Wheat Flour: Carbalose
    • <30% BG impact of wheat flour, <20% of white bread
    • texture & water uptake very similar to wheat flour
  • Lowest BG impact: Ground chia seeds
    • 12% of wheat flour, 8% of white bread
  • Best Binders: Gluten, chia seeds, flaxseed, and psyllium husk
    • These work great to tune the texture of other flour replacements
    • Which one is best to use probably depends on the specific recipe/desired texture
  • Best Pre-made Blends: King Arthur Keto Flour & Carbquik
    • King Arthur is a flour substitute, though more elastic/chewy
    • Carbquik is like Bisquik and great for biscuits, pancakes, muffins, and other airy baked goods.

Details

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Low-Carb Flour Replacements: Initial Blood Glucose Testing & Request for Suggestions

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This post is an update on my experiments measuring the effect of low-carb foods and dietary supplements on blood sugar.

I’m still working my way through low-carb flour replacements, but since I’m running the vinegar experiment in parallel, it’s going to take a while to get through all of them.

In the meantime, I wanted to share my preliminary results and see if anyone has suggestions for additional low-carb flours to add to the study.

If you have any low-carb flour replacements you like or would like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM (contact form on the right).

Next week I’ll have an update on the vinegar experiments.

Testing Queue:

Flour Replacements

When making low-carb baked goods, I find that the most difficult ingredient to replace is flour. Flour provides bulk, absorbs water, and binds ingredients together, creating the structure of most baked goods. Unfortunately, it’s ~75% starch by weight with a glycemic index of 70, resulting in an extremely high impact on blood sugar.

Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of low-carb replacements for flour available, mostly almond flour, coconut flour, and resistant starches. Similar to other low-carb products, a ton of new flour replacements have hit the market in the last few years. As always, the net carb counts look good, but I wanted to test them to see if they really hold up (see evidence of blood glucose impact of dietary fibers here & here).

So far, I’ve found 11 flours to test:

  • Baseline:
    • Wheat flour
  • Modified starches
    • Carbalose flour
    • Carbquick
    • Freekeh flour
  • Nuts:
    • Almond flour
    • Hazelnut flour
  • Beans:
    • Lupin flour
    • Okara flour (from soybeans)
  • Other seeds:
    • Coconut flour
    • Hemp protein powder
    • Flaxseed meal
    • Psyllium husk powder

I’ve gotten through 7 so far and all have been pretty good, with peak ∆BG of 16-29% of wheat flour by weight and 9-23% by volume (see chart below).

As mentioned above, since I’m running the vinegar experiment in parallel, it’s going to take a while to get through the remaining flours. Once I do, I’ll post a full update with more detail on taste, texture, and the full blood glucose analysis.

In the meantime, since I’ve gotten such great recommendations from the readers, I wanted to solicit suggestions for additional low-carb flours to add to this study.

If you have any low-carb flour replacements you like or would like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM (contact form on the right).

I’ll test all the requests over the next couple weeks and post the results.


– QD

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Welcome Diabetes Daily Readers

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My testing of low-carb breads was just published on Diabetes Daily. If you got here from that article, here’s a few other studies you might be interested in:

I also post self-experiments on other topics, including sleep, exercise, and other health interventions.

I’m always looking for collaborators for future experiments. If you’re interested in collaborating on scientifically rigorous self-experiments with low-carb foods, supplements, or other health interventions, please let me know in the comments or via the contact form on the right.


– QD

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Low-Carb Chocolate: Blood Glucose Testing of 13 Varieties with Promising Results

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This post is an update on my experiments measuring the effect of low-carb foods and dietary supplements on blood sugar.

This week, I have the results from low-carb chocolates. Next week I’ll starting testing and posting flour replacements and other ingredients.

Testing Queue:

  • Prepared foods:
    • Snack bars: in queue
    • Chocolate: This post
  • Ingredients:
    • Flour replacements: in queue
    • Seeds & nuts: in queue
    • Vegetables: in queue
  • Supplements:

Chocolate

Summary

Since I’ve started posting these food-effect studies, one of the most requested products has been low-carb chocolate. As with other low-carb products, a ton of new low-carb chocolates have become available. Initially, most used a simple substitution of a non-nutritive sweetener, like erythritol, for sugar. However, I’ve noticed in the last few years, a number of high cocoa/low sugar chocolates that use regular sugar, just in very low quantities (90-100% cocoa).

In both cases, the net carb count can be very low, though this largely relies on subtracting the high fiber content of the cocoa. Since I’ve had very mixed results with the blood glucose impact of dietary fiber (see here & here), I tested them myself.

Towards that end, I tested 13 chocolates from 4 different categories (grouped by sweetener). Here’s my overall conclusions:

  • Lowest BG impact: Lily’s Almond Dark & The Good Chocolate Signature Dark
    • ~65% of the impact of 100% cocoa bars
  • Best combination of taste & impact: Taza Wicked Dark & Trendz Bar
  • Chocolate with added fiber shows much higher blood glucose impact
    • There’s a significant variation between brands
    • This could be due to different fiber type or quantity
  • Watch out for the ChocZero chocolate, which gave ~2x the BG impact of the next highest chocolate.

Evidence continues to pile up that there’s a large variation in the impact of different fibers, even ones with the same name listed on the nutrition label. I’m going to see whether I can source a decent variety to test.

If anyone knows where to get the fibers and resistant starches that are used in low-carb prepared foods (especially from the actual manufacturers), please let me know in the comments or by PM.

As always, please let me know if you have any thoughts, suggestions, or anything else you’d like to see me test.


– QD

Details

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