Best correction ever!
Guinness and vanilla ice cream. This tastes awesome!
Nice! I’ve made delicious beer floats with Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout (used to be available at Trader Joe’s for a good deal, among other places, might still be) and vanilla ice cream. So good!
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I have never heard of such a thing. It would never have occurred to me that beer and ice cream can be mixed !!!
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Only certain beers. You wouldn’t want to do it with an IPA! (although sherbet and an IPA could go nicely together)
But stouts and porters work great with ice cream.
Try it!
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Perfect! I am also a fan of those not your dad’s root beer floats. I’d probably have to be in the 30’s for that.
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I was shocked to learn how many carbs are in those!
The label does not show it (at least, it didn’t last time I checked which was about 2 years ago). I called the company to find out, and they would not tell me!
(I am not sure of the rule, but I think that companies who make alcoholic products do not have to put their nutrition info on the product)
So I looked into it, and someone did their own gas chromatogram of it, and the word finally got out a bit. It is now on myfitnesspal and other places. I think because it is an alcohol, they list carbs and sugars separately. But bottom line for PWD’s, it’s about the same as a sugar soda.
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@Eric - How can Total Carbs be lower than Sugars? What am I not understanding here?
Wow, 55 carbs – amazing! I never would have guessed.
@Eric says they list carbs and sugars separately because it’s an alcohol beverage.
Sugar is a carb. That would be like listing Fords and Cars separately. It doesn’t make sense to me.
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Well, I am not sure! I think that.
But I don’t really know because like Thomas says, total carbs is less than sugar carbs.
The other thing is that this information may be from the independent gas chromatogram. I don’t know that the company ever released their information. I also think it is because they are a brewery, but since a lot of breweries do have this information, it might be that a micro-brewery does not have to do it. Like maybe a small mom-and-pop bakery does not need to list carbs, but a big chain company would have to?
I am not sure of the nutrition rules on labeling.
But I do know - from personal experience - this stuff is incredibly sugar laden.
That is the bottom line. If you need to dose, the practicality is how much insulin. Another aspect for you T1 drinkers, do you find your insulin needs are impacted later overnight and the next morning perhaps due to liver impacts from the alcohol?
I continue to hope I am still some years out from requiring this knowledge.
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Yes, very much so—I will go low if I drink (especially more than 1 drink), go to bed at target blood sugar level, and have my usual long acting insulin on board. I handle this by some combo of backing off my long acting and having a before bed snack that has a decent bit of fat as well as some carbs, and also knowing that I may well need to treat a low in the very early am (but as someone who has good hypo sensitivity, that doesn’t concern me much). The lows I do get from alcohol tends to drift down rather slowly, but also be fairly treatment resistant/take a little more to boost back up. If I were someone with poor hypo sensitivity, I would be very cautious around drinking and probably only do it rarely and err on the side of going to bed significantly higher.
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On the other hand, I have considered using a nightly shot of bourbon to combat dawn phenomenon—metformin ended up doing the trick for me instead, but I still think it might be a reasonable approach for someone. Probably drinking very regularly is easier to manage than drinking sporadically.
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I definitely find after my liver has finished processing the alcohol it starts back on producing the basal sugar but at a higher pace as if it’s catching up on lost time - in the past I could easily see it peak at 250 if I didn’t dose for it
Day drinking in the summer on the weekend is easier to control as you continue to eat food and before you go to sleep it’s all out of your system but I also find a snack before bed keeps off the nighttime low and an extra dose in the am when it starts again
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For me, no, the effect is negligible – or at least indistinguishable from the multifarious effects from foods, general well-being, time of year, etc., etc.
Then again, we’re not talking huge amounts of alcohol. A cocktail (yes, okay, it’s true, one and a half on a weekend), or a glass or two of wine with dinner – rarely both with the same meal. And if it is both, or more, then it’s most likely a nice meal out where the carb count is going to be off anyway and so who the heck knows or cares what’s going to happen overnight. Oh, and I often bolus a little for the cocktail if it contains a carb ingredient, such as simple syrup, Campari or Cynar.
It bugs me how so much of the guidance about alcohol and diabetes assumes you’re going on a big drunkfest. You know, like alert your drinking companions that you have diabetes and that the signs of extreme blotto-ness are similar to the signs of a hypo.
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In fairness, moderate drinking as a diabetic is fine and probably almost unnoticeable, and heavy drinking is of course fine if you have learned how your body works. But with so many Type 1’s diagnosed as children and young adults, the binge drinking in college is probably the #1 worry of parents and endo’s and therefore much (too much?) information is written about it.
What really needs to be written about moderate drinking. How to carb count and not much else…
As for my son, he will have to demonstrate his ability to manage himself, before he graduates to college. So I will worry less.
I find I need more carbs per unit of insulin in the morning after a couple of glasses of wine with dinner the night before. And I am considering a slightly lower temporary basal overnight, too, since a bedtime snack doesn’t seem to make much difference.
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For what it’s worth, this is usually enough to trigger alcohol suppression of liver glucose release for me. Once I get to 2 cocktails or 2 glasses of wine (my max usually), the effect is very pronounced. I think it’s maybe more about how much your liver is usually active—I suspect mine is very much so, given how noticeable it is whenever something (prolonged lows, alcohol, exercise) depletes glycogen.
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