Potatoes, Rice, and Bread = Carbohydrates

When reading blogs written by people required to follow the dogma of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), I can only say that the advice needs to be scrutinized very carefully. They tend to treat topics like carbohydrates as a “one size fits all” mantra.

This means you should trust your meter and what it is telling you about the foods you are consuming. Then adjust your portion size to fit what your meter is telling you. Yes, some people can eat all three foods in the title above, and others must eliminate all three from their menu. This means that each individual must find their level and follow it. Periodically you may need to retest to see if anything has changed as this can happen.

We must understand that the ADA promotes the USDA MyPlate solution for starches. Promoting them as the source of nutrients can be misleading as many of the vitamins and minerals can be found in other foods and often in higher quantities. There are people that cannot tolerate gluten found in grains, but these people are often ignored in their advice.

The question included potatoes, rice, and bread, but bread is often the main topic of discussion and brown rice is just given a mention. Potatoes are often completely ignored and a broad statement is made about starches. While potatoes are starches, some types of potatoes create lower blood glucose problems than others. Here again, testing is the only way I know that will give you answers of what types will work for your body chemistry. I am still able eat some potatoes, but not as often or as much as before diabetes.

What I have been surprised about is the rice. One variety (white rice) that everyone has told me to avoid, I can have a decent size serving and have only a small increase in blood glucose. Now brown rice does raise my blood glucose more than 60 mg/dl with just a small serving. This is why each person needs to find out what their body tolerates and not rely on others and what works for them.

Educators will not tell you that if you have a weight problem, elimination of wheat from your diet may help the most in weight reduction. They will only say to eliminate the highly processed bread and use whole wheat bread. Both contribute to the weight problem and it is the quantity of bread consumed. If you can tolerate wheat, consider greatly limiting the quantity.

Everyone needs to be confident of what they eat in relation to the level the food will raise your blood glucose. Meters today are slowly becoming more accurate and we need to trust them. I still find changes that I need to make as I age and my body becomes more sensitive to certain types of carbohydrates.