My guess is you’ll have to massively overbolus, then feed the tail of the insulin on the way down, but totally can be done.
Our kids don’t eat sugar cereal because we don’t eat them, but we’ve successfully bolused for things like Cheerios and Grape Nuts before.
@TiaG. How the heck do you successfully bolus for Grape Nuts. I just have to pick up the box and my Bg goes over 200.
Doc, try them for dinner sometime instead of breakfast, and see if there is a difference.
I know that in Liam’s case, we would see a huge difference. Breakfast for Liam is the most severe BG reacting meal of the day (as it is for many diabetics). The same cereal would probably have little or no effect on him later in the day. But I want to beat the breakfast blues so we’ll keep testing it for breakfast. He’s so young that I’m not going to deprive him of the yummy cereals his brothers enjoy.
Do you every buy the mini variety packs? Those are awesome. They bundle all the delicious unhealthy ones together!
Nah, the bigger packs are cheaper. Those would disappear too fast in my home. 
I’ll have to try it for breakfast next weekend. That’s the lowest I usually am during the day. I don’t even bolus for a 10g carb breakfast. But I haven’t tried Grape Nuts for years.
We actually don’t see much of a difference in BG spikes (morning time) on the CGM from one cold cereal to the next. They have slightly different carbs but they are mostly all in the same ballpark (carb count) and seem to impact with the same speed (which is FAST).
I’m not sure we have any special strategy other than just overbolusing and watching the CGM like a hawk.
This is what I would guess is the case too – that once you’re in the cereal category, lucky charms and raisin bran pretty much work the same. We see a need for much more insulin with, say, home-made muesli, which is all “healthy” stuff like shredded apple, rolled oats and yogurt as we likely would for Cocoa Puffs.
The difference for me between something like Frosted Flakes versus Rice Krispies is whether it comes in within 15 minutes or 40 minutes. The total carbs are close, but the speed is much different.
I know there is a school of thought that GI doesn’t really matter, that carbs are carbs. Not sure who’s idea that is. Maybe it’s just for weight loss or something? But to me, the carb speed makes a big difference in how much pre-bolus time I need. Not just for cereal, for anything.
we do find a difference with slow versus fast carbs (whole wheat pasta is one of our favorite dinner meals for just this reason), but I guess I just think all breakfast cereals are pretty fast in terms of GI – and I also think for us the actual texture makes a big difference. A bagel is super easy to bolus for because it’s basically like a rock that just sits in the stomach taking forever to digest for our son, so we just bolus as he sits down to eat and it doesn’t really cause a spike at all, even though it has a crazy number of carbs. Most breakfast cereals are pretty processed and broken down into their component parts - they take very little chewing for instance. So maybe that’s the key factor there for us?
Our cereal choice is somewhat limited so we may not have tried cereals that you find are slower.
The whole gluten-free thing. (Which includes malt. ha !!!) Cuts out just a few of those boxes from the big cereal row…
Ha, I’m trying to think of any GF cereals that don’t have added sugar that I’ve tried that would fit the slower category, and I’m pretty much coming up blank. Except for plain Chex (which coincidentally is what I tried with Afrezza).
Yeah - We get the Chex also. Low added sugar but still high refined carb.
Chex / Cheerios / Lucky Charms - No difference. Either pre-bolus or we get another visit to the land of 300+ in short order.
Oh, I miss Cheerios (one of the many things I didn’t care one way or another about until I couldn’t have them! Tried them when they went “gf,” but I reacted to them still). I’m finding a pre-bolus is an absolute must for anything these days.
There’s huge debate about the safety of Cheerios/Lucky Charms, which I always hate getting into…I can do oats fine, but I guess I got one of the “bad” boxes of Cheerios (my sister with CD also did), so for me, personally, it’s just not worth the risk to eat their oat-containing cereals anymore. I know quite a number of folks with celiac do fine with them (which is great!), but I’ll just avoid them and hope they’ll improve their practices in the future. 
Oh, I wasn’t questioning you at all! I know a caring parent would never deliberately risk glutening their child. I’m sorry for the severe reactions. 
I had thrown out my box by the time I heard about the recall (it was a couple months after I was glutened), so I’ll never know if it was one of the boxes they acknowledged were contaminated, or just was one of their regular batches that aren’t tested very effectively. That’s why I avoid them - I’m too chicken to test it further myself. 
I did not take it that way.
The severe reaction goes both ways. It sucks but it also helps with immediate feedback.
Very true. I was somewhat relieved when I suddenly went from reacting within 12-24 hours to within 30 minutes. Much easier to pin down what did it.