Does golden granulated sugar have a lower GI than White sugar?

[KellyKettle]

That's it really. Diabetic MIL has started consuming huge amounts because it's "natural, unrefined, good for you".

I'm sceptical but dont know why a diabetic person would load up on sugar of any kind anyway.

Any ideas?

No sugar has a low GI. Sugar is sugar.

Does she check her blood sugar levels? If not, buy her a meter and she will see that her sugar is sky-high I expect.

She went to her GP recently who told her he wanted to put her on metformin to control her blood sugars because her test results showed they had worsened. She begged for a chance to control then with diet again/lose weight.

Since then she's gone baking crazy - she made 6 different batches of cakes in a day last week. I had never really known her to bake before this.

I hadn't even thought of the White flour. I have never seen check her blood sugars or talk about it, I don't think she does.

She generally has porridge with dried fruit for breakfast and then nothing until dinner but she snacks/drinks all evening. We stayed at the weekend and DH took her mug to make her a coffee and said the bottom was covered with undissolved sugar.

She is convinced that golden sugar is healthier because it's not refined. I couldn't find anything when I googled.

Ps sorry for the delay, was feeding baby when I posted and passed out.

She bought a diabetic cook book but us focusing on the bits that say "use icing sugar instead of caster sugar because it's sweeter so you use less".

She won't eat more often because she is trying to lose weight so thinks fewer meals is better. Plus she told me that, on her GPs advice, she cut back to one meal a day to "kick start" her pancreas again which "cured" her diabetes. I posted about it on MN & googled but couldn't find anything to support it.

I'll suggest the dietician and the other flours. I wonder if her baking is a bit of an odd reaction to her worsening test results.

Perhaps if you could encourage her to test her blood throughout the day, it would allow her to see how her diet is actually affecting her sugar levels? If she hasn't got a meter, you can get them from chemists I think.

Maybe icing sugar is sweeter than granulated if you are eating it by the spoonful - I could see that the larger surface area could let it interact with more taste receptors. But I can't see that this would make a ha'porth of difference once it is stirred into tea, or incorporated into cake.

Oh weirdly, I just googled "diet for type 2 diabetic" and found this

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8594293/Crash-course-diet-reverses-Type-2-diabetes-in-a-week.html

so she may have been on this diet.

She needs to keep all cakes etc to a minimum, eat lots of fruit and veg and lean protein. She needs to eat regularly and should having having a sweetener instead of sugar in drinks, constant top ups of sugar between meals from sugary drinks is a very bad idea.

Could the practice nurse see her for a bit of a chat while you are waiting to organise the dietitian - she needs a bit of steering in the right direction IMHO.

Loads of cakes are not good for any one, especially not someone with diabetes. It sounds like she is misunderstanding it all really.

info from diabetes uk here

My MIL managed her diabetes through diet for many years before eventually needing insulin (she's 93 now so I reckon she must have been doing something right).

She did not bake; rarely ate a biscuit as a treat. She wouldn't have dreamed of sugaring drinks. Barely drank alcohol (an odd celebratory single scotch).
Ate lots of meat, cheese, veg - with a roast dinner might allow herself one roastie (and she made gorgeous roasties). Didn't eat much bread. Thought about carbohydrate content of fruit - did eat a lot of cream with it, and natural yog. Did not skip meals or snack.

She may have gone to slightly greater extremes than is recommended nowadays (before the 'GI' idea took off) but - given her longevity - she would seem to have erred on the right side. Unlike your MIL, unfortunately.

Sorry posting from my phone so missed the other posts.

I think that must be what she tried Bran but she didn't stick to it. She used to drink diet drinks but asked her GP if she was allowed sugar and he said she could in moderation. 2l bottles of coke started appearing in her fridge and after dinner she'd eat 2 deserts. She can't do moderation and I think this is what led to her blood sugar test results getting worse (can't remember test name sorry).

DH is going to buy her a monitor (although he thinks she'll be annoyed) and I'm going to call her later about it and ask if she's had diet advice. I'll have to be careful how I say it I think.

My DH has diabetes and I'm a podiatrist so we do a lot on diabetes because they make up a lot of our case load.

Not being mean, but they will find any way to sneak sugar into their diets. Having said that dh was given little diet advice but luckily I knew what to do (and diagnosed him and sent him to the gp).

Sugar is sugar, if she looks on the back of the pack it will tell her exactly how much of the carbohydrates in sugar is sugar. Un-refined sugar would be sugar beet or cane in its raw form, plantation owners with slaves had rampant tooth decay but slaves who ate raw cane didnt because it was ingested with plant fibre etc which slows down absorption.

Her HbA1c test will show up what she has done so it cannot be hidden from the gp she is caning it (no pun intended).

Another problem she has is in her interpretation of moderate. To me a treat is something I have when I have pmt, to dh its a daily reward to going to a job he hates. Gp might have been thinking one pudding a fortnight, def not two a day.

Some diabetics cannot tell when their sugar is too high so she might not feel ill with high reading anyway, but no one with type II diabetes eats a high sugar diet and maintains good control.

But, she is a grown adult and if a high sugar diet is worth her going blind from/.getting kidney failure/losing a leg for then there is little you can do. I know exactly how stubborn they are. I've met some who maintain control and most who bumble along thinking it will never happen to them.

Diabetes UK is an excellent resource for patients who need advice but dont forget their is a distinction between ignorance and willful mis-management.

The gp practice should have some free blood sugar monitors for patients but they are less keen these days to give them out as some patients take note of a high reading but dont actually do anything about it so the attitude now is to rely on HbA1c readings which the patient cannot lie about (diabetics lie all the time to us, I'm not above phoning a practice nurse to ask if Mr X has excellent control, the derisive snort down the phone tells you a lot!).

There is a product called sweet freedom which is in tesco and asda iirc, it is supposed to be a low GI product but when I emailed them to ask the gi reading they just said it is low gi so I didnt buy it.

A book on a low gi diet would tell you more about what she is eating, things like roast parsnips and white baguettes are surprisingly high gi.

I saw that diet too btw, from what I understand its only 400 calories a day? a bowl of porridge with dry fruit must be most of that allowance, surely you cant snack all day too??

Thanks Fluffy. That's interesting.

She snacks all night, well I don't live with her but she lived here for a period of 6 months and I'd see empty packets if butterkist popcorn, chocolate and sweets in the bin all the time along with fizzy drinks bottles. DH asked her about it but she said it was a few treats and she made a packet last ages but it seemed too often for that.

When we visit I generally go to bed much earlier than MIL but if I get up for a glass of water or something she'll be eating crap and drinking alcohol with lemonade (assume it's vodka). I did suspect it because she wears size 22 clothes but eats less than I do in the day.

Are they the complications of diabetes? Oh crikey. She doesn't seem bad enough to develop problems, though I am not exactly a diabetes expert.

She's also been using agave syrup in her food, do you know anything about that?

I just spoke to her. She doesn't monitor her bloods and she now denies eating anything with golden sugar in - says it's for her mum. Think she's a bit annoyed with me for asking.

Yes that was the name of the test she's having this week (reminds me of swine flu!). She said it's a measure of the last 3 months or something.

Perhaps metformin is a good thing then if she's not going to stop eating sugar.

That's good to know Bran. Just been talking to DH about it as his mum has type 2 and so does my dad which puts us and our DDS at high risk I suppose.

I think we're going to get a bit more watchful of our own sugar intake & that of our DDs.

Oh that's a good way to think of it. I've just said to DH that I've sat here worrying about his mum and he's polished off most of a selection box whilst I've been waffling.

It's the DDs I worry for more. They seem to be given sweet drinks, cake and chocolates wherever we go.

I'm going to look into it more, thanks Bran

Haha! I wouldnt even try!

Thanks for the tips, I'll give it all a try. It's probably DH who needs the biggest change but fortunately he knows he consumes too much crap so he's going to look at himself.

Bran - you're right. The ILs used to consume prodigous amounts of veg. If MIL made something like spag bol, she'd have the sauce with hardly any pasta but loads of cabbage etc etc. Not sweet veg like parsnips or carrots. It was a bit like a high-fibre variant of Atkins long before anyone had heard of him.
She had sight enough to drive till she was nearly 90 and still has all her toes... it really does seem that her rigour paid off. And when she did have a treat - one chocolate at Christmas - boy did she enjoy it!

It doesnt actually matter what type of diabetes patients have wrt long term side effects, my DH has the same risk of blindness etc as someone who has been on insulin from childhood. I think the problem is that some Drs still say mild diabetes, they said it to my DH. We were taught at uni that diabetes is diabetes and the only difference is the method of control.

The diabetics I have treated who have had foot ulcers leading to amputation at the knee are often tablet controlled male patients who are unwilling or unable to change their diet, usually women are better with diabetes because they are less stubborn wrt to change and have a better idea of how many calories each food has (esp the ones who calorie counted in the 70s and 80s).

I think it's interesting that she got a bit off with you when you tried to brook the subject, I would imagine she knows full well what shes doing. Metformin doesnt cause the weight gain that some tablets do, it makes your body more sensitive to insulin rather than squeezing out extra insulin from the pancreas. Some patients cannot tolerate it due to stomach upsets though.

Sometimes it's the patients excess weight that is causing the diabetes and when (if) they lose it they can actually go back to normal again. I had a patient who was on insulin and tablets, he lost 5 stone and was just on a low dose of tablets. The Dr said if he lost more weight they would try him on diet control only.

Diabetes often skips a generation eg DHs parents are not diabetic (they eat like Grimmas gp do) but both his grandmas where and he was at 43, but his mother used to send him to school with jam sandwiches at his request, he used to eat a very refined diet with his exp, drink 3 pints of milk a day (high in easily broken down sugar and it also encourages insulin production so you run out quicker). None of his 3 aunts or uncles have diabetes.

I do think the best way forward it for you as a family to eat well and to understand nutrition, I do the 80/20 rule bran does and I maintain my weight. I have Polycystic ovary syndrome and we are more likely to develop diabetes as a result so my gp checks my HbA1c yearly and at the moment it's 5.

I think what you have to keep in mine with your mil is that each time she goes to the gp about her diabetes they will be advising lifestyle changes and asking her to reduce sugar consumption, she will most likely see a nurse at the practice too who will be the diabetes nurse and she will also re-iterate the advice the gp gives. If she sees the NHS podiatrist we also ask what the last HbA1c reading was and have posters up encouraging healthy eating for diabetics and smoking cessation. It's a multidisciplinery (sp?) approach so the patients dont get the idea for a second that good blood sugar control is not important.

If I was in your position I would concentrate on my DH and DC and improve their diets more than mil, I'm not being mean but it's her diabetes and it really is up to her to control it whereas you DC learn about food from you and will carry the lessons they learn throughout life. I have had patients who are 17 with type II diabetes because they where obese and the pancreas had essentially run out of insulin.