@Marie, while you’re very correct in saying that you don’t need to be low carb to get good numbers, for me it not only helps me to do that, but it also stops me from putting on buckets of weight.
My I:C ratio is pretty tight for someone of my size and if I have consistent days of 120g or over, then I am guaranteed that my body will store that away. I assume that is because I have had many DKA’s and my body is constantly trying to prepare itself, even if I haven’t had one in 8 years. 
In saying that, I’m not as strict on myself as I was when I started on my low carb journey. But I am definitely very aware that it doesn’t take much for me to start putting on the weight. I’m actually struggling with this at the moment, as I have been hypoing a lot lately, and it seems to take a lot more glucose to bring me back to safe levels. And my booty is paying for it! 
@SBee. Have you tried cauliflower rice? Low carb, easy to find frozen, but you can make it yourself with a grater if you prefer. You can also use zucchini noodles, or a few of the squashes you can spiral yourself.
@Trying. Sometimes it’s the sugar alcohols in things like the Atkins bars that can cause a spike. Sugar alcohols metabolize super fast so they don’t change BG levels in most people. There was a push to not even include them on a label. But they settled on listing them separately. But if you don’t make insulin it can be a problem. I went to a lecture by Scheiner and he said you might have to dose for them. Some people seem to be more affected than others.
I think that would be all of us here on FUD! I definitely spiked from it, just as though it was any other sugar. I only tried it once or twice. I don’t think it is worth another try! If I’m going to spike I might as well eat something I like! 
Thank you for adding this extra info! I’m glad to hear that some people are not affected by them!
Also, I LOVE cauliflower! I might try the cauliflower rice recipe. I know cauliflower does not last long refrigerated though. At least when I’ve added it to potatoes, the whole dish starts to spoil before the eow. So freezing may be the way to go as you mention it is easy to freeze!
@Marie, yes I have bought the frozen cauliflower rice, and made my own before. I find that it doesn’t hold it’s form so I just mix it into whatever dish I’ve made. The zucchini noodles I suspect would be similar. That’s why I really like the konjac noodles. They have no carbs at all, and while they don’t soak up any of the flavour (despite the claim that they do), they hold their form really well! The brand I get here in Australia is Changs super lo cal noodles, if you can get them or similar, I’d recommend giving them a try! https://www.changs.com/products/Changs-Traditional-Super-Lo-Cal-Noodles/
Zucchini noodles hold their shape, and soak up the flavor of what they are cooked in. We use them made with a vegetable peeler for lasagna and with a peeler that cuts them into noodles. I will say they aren’t very thin so this probably accounts for them not falling apart.
I’ll have to give them a try one day then, thanks @Chris! I also enjoy edamame and mungbean pasta. The carbs are 17/100g, and they’re really easy to cook. I’m actually planning on growing some edamame and turning them into into flour so that I can make pasta the shape that I want it to be! I miss lasagne…
I agree! I stay away from erythritol, mannitol, sorbitol…etc. They taste like crap (pardon my language), and hope no one is offended. Stevia tastes strange IMO.
Do the two foods, oatmeal and barley spike your BG?
SCFA are amazing! Previously, I did not comprehend all the reasons for including additional fiber in our diet. I used to believe that fiber would slow down the BG rise, which it does, and therefore would be the reason to include fiber in our meals. After reading additional papers on fiber, fermentation in the large intestine and the production of SCFA, I have learned so much more about the potential benefits of fiber, resistant starch, SCFA on our overall health. The potential benefits include better BG, insulin sensitivity, reduced inflammation, improved immunity.
The Hungry Microbiome has a few videos on the topics of : gut microbiome, starch fermentation, resistant starch, why SCFA are important. (The biochemistry is beyond me.)
@lh378 Several years back on diagnosis as T2, the CDE course I went to advocated using Net Carbs using the formula Total Carbs - Fiber - 1/2 Protein (if Protein was >5). On diagnosis as T1, vice T2, I discussed this with my Endo. She had never heard of the approach and said just use total carbs. Rationale: D’s can use turn some fiber and protein into carbs when the normal carbs aren’t there and trying to determine when and how much is nearly impossible. It’s better to just use the total carbs to dose for. I’m no doc or organic chemist, so others here with more info may say differently. In the mean time, I’ve going with total carbs, but be interested in other opinions!
I’ve tried the Chia pudding mix and eat it regularly, but with blueberries or strawberries. I also mix in some chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, pumpkin seed, almond), and use Wegman’s Original Unsweetened Almond milk (1g/cup) warmed in the microwave. Sprinkle in some cinnamon or clove and a little Splenda or Stevia. Makes for 30g carb meal.
We used to use total carbs, but after a few years of carefully calculating, my son just looks at a meal and doses based on his understanding of that meal type. If in doubt, he just pushes extra insulin and eats his way out of it. Handy when you are 18 and have a killer metabolism. When we did calculate, we always used total carbs.
I use a similar approach and have standard boluses based on the amount of carbs (small, medium and large) and then adjust as needed.
do soooo agree about any of those sugar alcohols. I get spikes from most all and some afect/interfere with my digestion.
This is why I switched to using powdered monk fruit or a tincture in an alcohol solvent. I love stevia, it’s so freaking odd but after a year or so you come to enjoy it in stronger items like coffee. But that flavor can overpower some foods, hence the monk fruit.
I wonder if that’s why I love the powdered packets of monk fruit and Stevia.
Berstein has a value for the contribution of protein to insulin requirements; it’s something like 5g of protein equivalent to 1g of (adsorpable) carbs [“How to estimate preprandial doses of regular insulin”, Diabetes Solution]. Notice that this is a positive; not the negative you use. Likewise for fat.
The question here is not whether you are T1 or T2 but whether you are producing insulin. For those of us who don’t produce insulin (I use the term “a-pancreatic”) injected insulin is an absolute necessity to process the breakdown products of both protein and fat; we have to inject insulin (via bolus, or more commonly in this case basal) to process any carbohydrate.
The breakdown products of fibre (US fiber) are so minute and, more important, so slow to produce that for an a-pancreatic attempting to adjust insulin dosage, however it is done (bolus, extended bolus, delayed extended bolus, basal) is simply unmanageable. To some extent that applies to fat too, and maybe even protein.
For non-a-pancreatics because your body produces insulin you will for certain adsorp those carbs if they are delivered in insolation. If they are coming in with other stuff I expect they will require extra basal; this is based on my limited understanding of insulin resistance, I believe it cuts in if the carbs entering the blood stream from digestion exceed the (reduced) capacity of the liver to adsorp.
So the exact formula depends pretty much entirely on both our individual metabolism (producing any insulin or none) and what we want to achieve; total insulin requirement, or immediate bolus requirement?
This is a conflation of all the stuff we can eat - carbs, protein, fat, fibre…
Yet original post was about the curious US approach to food labelling; including things which are chemically carbohydrate yet ingestible by most human beings in the carb amount on the food label. For US a-pancreatics this is one of the banes of living here; we have doctors who are scared to death of us going hypo combined with food labelers who work really hard to get us to over-bolus. They both affirm each other; we follow the US food label and we go hypo, horrible, horrible a-pancreatics, we should all be lined up against the wall and reprimanded, etc.
I just found this longer article on the Beeb web site:
It’s not UK specific, in fact a disproportionate amount considers US food labels, but it’s good background.
I’ve noticed a few things about the current US food labels (including the 2016 revision) that I see as particularly problematic for everyone; I regard the inclusion of dietary fibre as problematic for a-pancreatics but that’s just us. Here are a couple that bug me:
- The absolute amounts of stuff are per serving; this is fine in itself, but for people actually following a diet per-100g is much more useful because it is readily converted into the total amount using a pair of scales to weigh the portion (or just eyeballing it). The article doesn’t show any examples of EU or UK food labels; UK labels include both a “serving” amount and a “per 100g” amount, the EU version seems to just be per-100g:
The US approach compounds with the low precision of the food label - the amounts in grammes are rounded to the nearest gramme. The consequence is that back-calculating a sugar content can produce massive errors for things with small serving sizes; e.g. packets of sweeteners are often less than 0.5g in total weight and that’s the serving size…
- There are no labels on alcohol and, in particular, beer. That’s a big problem because US beer varies enormously in the proportion of alcohol/carbohydrate and the final result depends on the original concentrations before fermentation.
If you are over 120? As in 120 blood sugars or carbs?