Reading this post earlier today, I thought of how many misconceptions there are about diabetes “out there”.
I think the one that I find more amusing is the one that many food manufacturers tend to play with the most: “No Sugar Added”. Lots of ice creams out there have no sugar added… literally, which doesn’t mean that they don’t have any sugar (they literally didn’t add any EXTRA sugar to the ingredients) or, much less, that they don’t have any carbs. So, next time you are going to dive nose first into a bucket of “No Sugar Added” ice cream, take a look at the label: you will be surprised at what you find.
Any other food misconceptions you would like to share?
I think all of us or most of us have experienced the joys of what sugar alcohols can do to the digestive system! Someone gave us a bag of chocolates sweetened with this stuff and we only have one toilet-you do the math lol.
We have those issues being Gluten Free. Wheat free is not gluten free! What was the FDA thinking when they required Wheat be listed under allergens and not Gluten!?
There is also the “reduced” products. Reduced from what? Reduced from very dangerous to only slightly dangerous? From buckets of sugar to scoops of sugar? Reminds me of a scene from Analyze This:
Mob guy 1: I’m going to get a sandwich, you want one?
Mob guy 2: whats healthier than a sandwich?
Mob guy 1: a half a sandwich.
This isn’t quite the same, but I hate that the packaging of some diet colas looks just like the regular versions. We’ve come home from the grocery store with the wrong kind several times. And one time I didn’t notice until I was halfway through the bottle!
Warnings on sugar-free treats are a riot to read when you’re “on the bowl”, I think that’s why they’re printed in such tiny lettering…they know you have the time to read them.
My favorite one was when we were at the grocery store last week. Saw a product on the shelf “Reduced Sugar Frosting…50% less sugar!” (made by a company that rhymes with Pillsbury). Checked out the nutritional info and found out for the same size serving the reduced sugar frosting had only 2 grams of carbs less and 3 grams of fat more than the regular frosting!
how nice! My mom compared reduced fat twinkies to regular twinkies when I was a kid and we had a good laugh, they were the same thing except the reduced fat ones were smaller!
What’s awful is that it’s sometimes real hard to find the listing of what they’ve used to make it “lite”, or what they’ve used instead of sugar.
It’s critical for me, because in addition to being T2, I’m also deathly allergic to NutraSweet. Can’t tolerate the stuff! It makes my mouth prickle and my throat swell up and close!
There are getting to be more and more things like ice cream and desserts that are sweetened with sucralose that I can handle, but soda is right out. I can’t find even one that uses a sweetener I can handle. So I went to the simple, if a little extreme, expedient of making my own. I got the CO2 tank, regulator, and hose, a set of special caps that go on a 2-liter bottle and connect to a CO2 hose for carbonating drinks, and I mix my own diet beverages. I also make my own seltzer from filtered tap water.
I used to make my own regular soda, using champagne yeast to carbonate it, but this is much easier and faster, and sometimes much tastier. And it has the added benefit that it won’t kill me!
My boyfriend is on a diet, and he keeps buying all this reduced fat stuff. Unfortunately for me, all reduced fat foods have twice as much sugar in them - they replace the fat with sugar.
I had one person argue with me becuase she was sure there was sugar in diet coke. I am the diabetic, I think I know what will kill me. Another girl at work told me to just not eat, becuase then I won’t have to give myself insulin. The fact the the body produces sugar even if you don’t eat, because of the liver storing it up, wasn’t even my first comment back to her about the whole no eating thing.
On a british soap, a character killed herself by breaking her insulin tubes then eating loads of chocolate. Now most people believe that I will die by eating chocolate, so I can’t even have the ocassional bar without people having a go at me.
And as for the ‘No Added Sugar’ it always makes me laugh. My boyfriends parents bought a box of frosties reduced sugar saying I could eat them. I tried to point out that they are still so full of sugar it is unreal and I was happy with my weetabix.
I find that if something says sugar free or no sugar added the first thing I do is look at the carbs because in a lot of cases they have added other things. In some cases the sugar free item has more carbs than the regular one! Now that is just unfair!
I agree Kathryn. I never buy anything “light” because the carb count is usually higher. That is true also of things you wouldn;'t even suspect, like sour cream. The light and fat free have higher carb counts. The one thing that I found that had a lower carb count was the 1/3 less cream cheese. It actually has lower carbs than the regular.
I like diabetes cookbooks that have dessert recipes for brownies for example-- it’s the same as the other recipe, just the diabetics recipe says to cut into 16 pieces-- the other 8-- and the diabetics brownies have “half the carbs”! You don’t say?!? Smaller brownies are healthier and have less carbs. Good news.
