I heard Thai food wreaks havoc on BG’s. Is there any truth to that?
Yes - but it depends on the food you order and how well you count the added sugar.
As you probably know, 1 tsp of sugar is 4g of carb and the Thai cooks know how to hide tablespoons of sugar in the dishes. Honey is another nasty surprise (great tasting) which can be found where you least suspect it.
If you are naive and only count the carbs you can see (rice, etc.) you are doomed! DOOOMED!
Once I went for Thai food and ended up at 400. I complained to my wife about the high BG and she commented - I wondered why you were eating that honey covered something or other. I went Honey covered? But it was sour! ACK!
Oh boy howdy does it: so many Thai sauces have sugar, maybe cornstarch or soy, too, to say nothing of the rice or noodles
HA! @Aaron is totally right. There’s probably some diabetes multiplier for Thai food (and Indian food, for that matter) that’s still unknown for us (even though we eat a lot of Thai food, and @EricH skips the rice).
My son loves the Masaman Curry, but we eat it with no rice, we take it home and weigh the potatoes and carrots since every serving seems to have a hugely and significantly different amount, and then add 30 carbs for 1/2 of a container of sauce. Works out pretty well and is tasty.
I think it really depends on what you order. We find it pretty easy to bolus for noodles and rice; it’s the proteins and the sauces that make it tricky. But if yours is anything like mine, he doesn’t really eat much of the sauce anyways so we just add a 0.2 or 0.3 unit bump up front and then just bolus aggressively based on rise rate. Usually he drops quickly after that.
@TravelingOn Indian food for us requires less bolus up front and then extra about 1.5 hours later. I don’t think it’s sugar (at least the things we order I know don’t really have any) but it’s all the extra fat in the gravy. When you let Indian food (from a restaurant) sit in the fridge, you’ll see huge amounts of oil pooling at the top. That’s what causes the delayed rise for us.
For me, the noodle dishes are just not worth it, beyond maybe stealing a bite from someone else’s, because between rice noodles (aka, sugar) and what they are cooked in (containing actual sugar), it’s a spike injectable insulin simply can’t manage, at least for me. If I ever get Afrezza, maybe then. I do ok with some of the other dishes (usually veggie/meat stir-fries, sometimes a curry), I just assume there are a decent amount of extra carbs in the sauces, and for restaurant food, I also typically start with my best guess for a pre-bolus, but once I’m eating it, if it seems potentially carbier than expected, I don’t hesitate to stack more insulin on top. I also usually expect to need a second post-meal shot if it’s a very high fat meal.
Yes. It is unequivocally true.