Question for Diabetics: Is Fructose Really Better?

[NotQuiteCockney]

If it's available, I always buy fructose or fruit sugar, for baking. It claims to have a GI of 26, as compared to glucose's GI of 100. Is it really that much better? It can't be, can it?

i use normal sugar when i cook. my sil uses fruisiana (?). it really screws my blood sugar up, i avoid it....

How does it screw your blood sugar up? Is it harder to work out what it will do to your blood sugar?

It doesn't seem logical to me, that fructose, which is still a simple sugar, would be that much better than glucose or sucrose. But how can its GI be 26?

(I'm a future type II diabetic, and somewhat GI inclined, hence the interest.)

Oh, hc, which of your Booker Prize pack have you read now? I just finished Never Let Me Go (already done On Beauty, and The Accidental), and started a thread about it ...

i am skiving the booker list nqc & reading some dreadful candace bushnell tripe . must get back to serious reading....

it made my blood sugar rise more than i'd expected, & for longer. a bit like rice, strangely..... i have no idea how fructose can have a GI of 26 - i think fruit doesn't cause such a rise in blood sugar as the fibre slows things down iyswim.

Yeah, of course, the fibre makes a big difference with fruit. And the water, maybe, and the general not-refined-ness.

Do protein, fats, etc also make a difference to GI? Not that fruit is loaded with these things.

I'm reading a Patricia Highsmith at the moment, Never Let Me Go was too heavy for me. It's really totally easy to read and very well-written, but quite upsetting, I found.

Is it just white rice that has surprising effects? Or brown too?

(Have you seen Prison Break? Very bad channel 5 series, in which, among other implausibilities, a non-diabetic has regular insulin injections and just goes a bit shaky, rather than, say, going into a coma and dying.)

protein & fat certainly make a difference - i find that ice-cream, for instance, doesn't cause much of a rise in blood sugar as the fat tempers the effects of the sugar. the same is true of chocolate..... not great for losing weight though!

my mil wants never let me go after i've read it, must press on.

lol at prison break! i would be shouting at the tv.... ummm, i'm not a big brown rice fan, though suspect that the extra fibre would be a good thing.

Thanks for the diabetes information. I've read that pretending to be (type II) diabetic is the best way to postpone getting it.

Prison Break is full of reasons to shout at the screen. The insulin injections were just part of the problem, really! (He was trying to get ahold of an insulin "blocker". I'm thinking that would cause all the symptoms of diabetes, right? Stupid TV show.) Prison governor making a model of the taj mahal, man committing a crime so he'll be sent to the prison his brother is on death row in, which is good, as that's the prison he designed, and he's got the plans tattooed on his body in a weird holographic way. Etc. All that in an hour!

Let me know as you make more progress with the Booker books. I'm enjoying Highsmith at the moment, and might read my new David Foster Wallace, if I can find it.

Oh, we only do brown rice and brown pasta. (Both of which my diabetic MIL refuses to eat. But that's her all over.)

I have a guess as to why glucose can have a low GI and still be ropey - GI isn't worth a lot without GL, from what I've read. So carrots have a really high GI, but there isn't much sugar actually in them, so their GL is low. I bet fructose has a low GI but a high GL - so there's loads and loads of sugar, so it coming through a bit slower than glucose doesn't make that much difference.

I don't think fructose is any better TBH. Think it's hype! Cynic, moi? You're right, pretending to be a Type 2 is supposed to reduce your chances of developing it or at least postpone the onset. Why do you think you're a future diabetic? GD?

I've tried canderel for baking with very bad results. Usually I just cut down on the amount of sugar and it doesn't seem to make much difference.

dh is diabetic and he doesn't use fructose as he says no point.... i don't know...
he has sweeteners in coffee etc and puts stuff like powdered canderel on cereal etc. things he actually conciously adds sugar to like drinks, cereal he uses sweeteners.
cakes or crumbles homemade or whatever have normal sugar and he puts that away just fine.
he is well contolled.

gingernut, all four of my grandparents were type II. I think all of them got it reasonably early. At least, I think only one of them lived past 60. Granted, two of those were alcoholics (which I am not), but still.

My mum is diabetic, too. I think my dad is pre-diabetic or some such.

Oh, I see. There is a lot of diabetes (Type 2) in my MIL's family and dh was diagnosed at age 34. He was put straight on to metformin because he wasn't particularly overweight, but he then started running every day, went on a diet and lost about 2.5 stone (taking his BMI down to 24). Since he lost the weight and has been exercising more frequently (doesn't run every day since the dses arrived though) he has been taken off the metformin and his blood sugar is controlled by diet alone (in fact, the specialist he was seeing said his blood test results looked like he didn't actually have diabetes any more IYSWIM, even though when he was first diagnosed his results were pretty bad). He has recently been put on Lipitor (a cholesterol-lowering drug) though. So, keeping your weight down and keeping fit should imrpove your chances as well as eating healthily. I would recommend you get your cholesterol checked if you haven't already BTW.

Sorry about your Mum BTW (saw your other thread) .

I am a type 1 diabetic.
Since aged 1.
Now 33 ( as of today )
Am currently on an insulin pump.

I hate fructose. Never use it.
Always makes me feel ill - similar effects to hoxtonchick.

The worse thing for me, is diabetic chocolate.
Makes me feel terrible.
My diabetic consultant advised me to forget it, never bother with diabetic sweets and just have a little bit of 'dairy milk' !
Music to my ears.
And I have followed his advice ever since !!

Give up on the fructose - its not worth it !!!

Worth knowing.

Do things with molasses and brown sugars work any better?

Also, is brown carb better than white?

Dp is diabetic (type 1, since a couple of years ago so still learning) and he doesn't go near any kind of sugar if possible (except the odd square of dark chocolate). Am rather at the idea of diabetics eating fruit crumbles tbh, but I suppose years of experience would prob make a difference there.

Brown sugar is still sugar IMHO. Basmati rice is supposed to be low GI, so a reasonable choice if you don't fancy chewing on brown rice. A South Beach-type diet (i.e. low carb, but not extreme like Atkins) is prob better than wondering which carbs you can have lots of - cos the answer is you can't .

Carolina moon - LOL at the fruit crumbles.

My consulatnt, at the time, was of the opinion that diabetics should not be denied anything.

Diet should be based on high fibre, low fat - lots of pasta, potatoes veg etc etc.

He believed that a balanced dinner - e.g. chicken breast with new pots, 3 veg....
followed by a small portion of baked alaska, crumble etc would not kill anyone.

This was music to my mums ears.
I have two older brothers with very healthy appetites.
Thus I was allowed a tiny portion of what everyone else was having.

I grew up never feeling denied, feeling that I was no different to anyone else and that my diabetes would never prevent me from doing anything I wanted.

I am not suggesting that this is suitable for every diabetic.
But it worked for me.

RachD, do you just take extra insulin if you're having something sweet for pudding?

DP is pretty good at keeping his blood sugars under 10, but he doesn't stick to low-fat food and that helps (as Hoxtonchick said, though it's prob storing up no end of bother for his heart...).

Yes CM, I do take a bit extra insulin.

I've had 'high fibre, low fat ' shoved down my throat for the last 20 years - as if there was no alternative.

What kind of 'diet' has been suggested to dp ?
What kind of things does he eat ?

well, dp hasn't actually seen a nutritionist - he doesn't think it's worth the time, unfortunately - so he's read a few books and mostly figured it out for himself.

He is more into keeping his blood sugar below 10 than watching his cholesterol, and does that mostly by trying to avoid sugary food and eating only a small amount of carbs - e.g. if we're having potatoes with a meal, he will only have a couple of small ones and extra vegetables to make up the difference. He eats wholegrain bread, he doesn't drink weak beer or white wine where poss because they are quite sugary, we try to eat low-GI things like lentils.

His horror of fruit crumbles is based on seeing what my mum's crumble did to his blood sugar . He's always had quite a sweet tooth and I think he finds it easier to avoid certain foods altogether than to have just a little bit. It must be very different if you've been diabetic pretty much all your life though.

I do the cooking at home, and I found this book handy to refer to (for the lists of high and low GI foods, rather than the recipes).

no loss on not seeing a nutritionist CM -
they never told my dh ( who is a type 2, as of last year) anything that he didn't already know - and generally nagged him and made him feel depressed !!!!
If you are using Gi and attempting to keep things below 10 - although they should probably encourage him to lower it gradually, so that he keeps it under 9, then under 8 etc etc, then I think you are doing pretty well.

As you said, its probably easier for me because I've never known anything else.

If you get diabetes at say 12 or 13... what a killer.

And getting it at say 35-40 - worse still !!!