Nanny State now targeting breakfast cereals

Deleted User wrote: »

And, yes, when even All Bran has c. 25% sugar, you know breakfast cereals with the exception of porridge are really bad for you.

Balanadan wrote: »

What's wrong with porridge?

Enter: OATMEAL.
Another interesting finding was my oatmeal test. Now, for the duration of the experiment, I ate my normal breakfast, which is typically some variation of 2 eggs cooked in butter or lard, vegetables (usually rotating between kale, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, etc.), and possibly some breakfast meat, like sausage or bacon. Alongside this, I have black tea (unsweetened) with heavy cream. [Read: I eat a low carb, high fat, moderate protein breakfast.]

This style of breakfast was a dream for my blood sugar, essentially flatlining it in the 80s or 90s. It’s also excellent for my energy levels, satiety, and productivity (low carb + real food + mindful eating for the win!). I can easily go for 3-5 hours without getting hungry (depends on the day and how active I am), which is nothing short of a miracle for someone who used to be a huge snacker.

There’s a reason I tend to return to a variation of this day after day. Even when I added a small slice of sourdough one morning and ½ cup of leftover roasted potatoes another morning, my blood sugar didn’t exceed 100 (the magic of not eating “naked carbs”).

I started to wonder if I was just super insulin sensitive in the morning or maybe had more wiggle room for carbs.

So, the final day of my CGM sensor, I decided to eat a breakfast similar to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ sample meal plan in their pregnancy guidelines. Their meal plan is oatmeal, skim milk, and strawberries. In other words, all carbs.

(For those of you familiar with my book, Real Food for Pregnancy, this is the same meal plan that I use to make a comparison on the nutrient-density and macronutrient ratio compared to my real food meal plan. This excerpt of the book is included in the free chapter download; see the bottom of this post or this page to get it.)

I don’t have skim milk in the house (and I never will), but I do have whole, grass-fed milk for my son. I also didn’t have strawberries, but I have raspberries, which are nutritionally similar. So I whipped up measured portions of rolled oats (1/2 cup dry, which is 1 cup cooked) prepared with water, a little milk poured on afterwards (I’m really not a fan of straight up milk, so I only used a few Tbsp), ½ cup raspberries, and because it was in-edibly plain, I added 1 measured teaspoon of honey (not heaping). Total carb count was 45g.

All things considered, this was NOT a large bowl of oatmeal and it was essentially NOT sweet, despite adding a little honey. (I say this to point out that the average person adds A LOT of extra sweeteners to their oatmeal, either with sugar/honey or dried fruit. My version would be unpalatable to many people.)

At first, I thought my blood sugar was doing ok after the oatmeal, but I then watched with horror on my Freestyle Libre as the readings climbed. When you scan the sensor, the Freestyle Libre reader shows an arrow next to the numerical reading with an up, down, level, or slightly up/down error, indicating your real time blood sugar trends. This was the ONLY time during the entire 10 days that I saw the straight up arrow, indicating my blood sugar was rising FAST.

My blood sugar went from 74 to a peak of 178 in an hour. By two hours, I was down to the 120s and by three hours, finally back down to 100.

This perfectly illustrates why I preach “no naked carbs” (meaning carbs eaten without a source of fat or protein). The spike from oatmeal was 40 points higher than my Thanksgiving dinner, which included stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie (in other words, the same or more carbohydrates than this unsatisfying, bland oatmeal breakfast). I’d wager that I didn’t spike as high from Thanksgiving because there was sufficient fat, protein, and fiber in the meal to slow digestion and absorption of the carbohydrates.

This image shows 4 days of blood sugar data.



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Continuous glucose monitor experiment in a non diabetic - oatmeal spike
3 days of happy blood sugar readings on my moderately low carb diet.

Day 4: OATMEAL for breakfast.

It was really interesting to watch it pan out in real time on my CGM. I had always assumed that I wouldn’t be hungry until my blood sugar was back down to normal or in the hypoglycemic range, but this experiment showed me that the hunger trigger (for me, anyways) is in response to the impending crash.

I actually didn’t end up hypoglycemic in response to this meal, but I literally had to eat something with substance (fat/protein) around the two hour mark (~ 2 oz of leftover grass-fed beef burger patty) to avoid going hangry. That probably stopped me from going into reactive hypoglycemia.

After this oatmeal experiment, I started wondering if my glycemic response to oatmeal was exaggerated or unusual. It’s surprisingly hard to find data on blood sugar responses in non-diabetics, especially when trying to examine the “peak” blood sugar response.

As you can recall, as long as blood sugar is back down to 140 mg/dl by two hours after eating, then you’re supposedly “in the clear” by conventional guidelines for diabetes/prediabetes. If a study has people measure their blood sugar only at 2 hours, you’re likely to miss the peak glycemic response in many people. Moreover, different people peak at different times, so without a million finger pricks or CGM, the results aren’t going to be very meaningful.

gozunda wrote: »

The bizarre thing though was in the 1970s nearly everyone added sugar to the breakfast cereal, their tea, ate sweets and biscuits made with real sugar and were generally skinnier than people today!

whisky_galore wrote: »

Bet they weren't sat on their arses for 8 hours a day.

gozunda wrote: »

Not all of us by any means. Shovelled two tons of gravel recently and got some incredulous comments. Plenty people still have physical jobs. Imo I still don't eat the amount like the parents generation did.