Chapter 4 - “Hay”, What About Fiber?Want More Diabetes Info? Search HERE
For instance, I’ve picked up several “low carb” snack bars in the grocery store which were labeled as only containing two or three “net” carbs, but the labeling on the back of the package showed that there were actually more than twenty grams of carbohydrates in the food! They were supposed to be canceled out by the presence of several grams of fiber. Wanting desperately to believe that my wife could really eat one of these luscious goodies with no more consequence than two or three carbohydrates would normally cause, we’ve tried them. But to date, in each case, subsequent testing of the blood sugar and the urine has shown responses identical to an intake of over twenty grams of pure, raw, unadulterated carbohydrates from any high-carb food. Regardless of the “NET” figure advertised, the actual effects on her blood sugar, and my own, have been in proportion to the actual full carbohydrate content of the food, regardless of the theoretically canceling effects of the fiber! This leaves me to question much of the “net carb” theory. For instance, what specific effects is the fiber truly supposed to becanceling? Is it supposed to be in terms of blood sugar readings or some other effect? Because in the case of both my wife and myself, that theory has proven to be unreliable in terms of measured blood sugar effects. I can only assume that if it’s true for us, it must be true for a great many type II diabetics and pre-diabetics as well. Maybe the effect measured by the “net carb” theory is a measure of some other physiological phenomenon. But the most important thing in the context of this book is that the concept of “net carbs” can’t always be trusted as true in terms of blood sugar in type II diabetics and pre-diabetics, despite the popular hopes and assumptions. In all fairness, I haven’t tried it with a large cross-section of diabetics to see if other type II diabetics like my wife and prediabetics like myself are all as sensitive to carbohydrates as we are, even in the presence of fiber. But I certainly expect it to be true for very many, if not the majority.
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