Thanks for that suggestion. No I hadn't thought of it, but I've just had a browse through the various bread mixes on Amazon, and I see several look interesting, so I've ordered a couple, and a bread maker to go with them!
Which is presumably why his food including bread had to be weighed. "With everything weighed. Included bread - although only wholemeal."
But clearly not among those who were having to weigh their food back in the 1950's. Basically as most people's energy is derived from carbohydrates, google, google, banning all of them would have been rather impractical, even then.
As a matter of interest it seems blood glucose test strips are around a tenner for 100 on Amazon although a replacement monitor thingy would presumably be a lot more. But if it were a question of my own health, I think I'd regard this as a worthwhile investment, if only for my own peace of mind.
michael adams
...
BTDTGTTS. Had NHS ones for 18 years, then they took them away. I have the monitor, and may well go back to testing again, but over those years I learnt what diet to eat, what foods have a high glycemic index, what are low etc.
In fact the total carbohydrate load and the GI hit from sugear is less than from refined cereal flours.
A typical slice of bread may be 70gm of almost pure easily digestible starch.
70gm of sugar is HUGE.
We've had a Panasonic breadmaker for the last 8 years, and not bought a loaf of bread since having it. You might need to experiment with various bread mixes, or better mix your own, and try different flours, but persevere and you won't regret it. Bonus is the house smells yummy when it's baking.
Indeed so! As the aroma fills the house, just try resisting the desire for a slice of bread whilst it is still warm.
Chris
as long as you don't mind trees growing out of your arse.
I resist that fine. But I do have the reminder set so that the bread has cooled completely by the time that the new loaf is ready to be the evening meal which is a massive great open sandwich which is the dome of the vertical loaf with usually cold roast leg of lamb with chutney or relish and lettuce. Every 4 days that I make the new loaf of bread.
OTOH the bugger who got me into using bread machines who was by far the most obese person I have ever met in person, was quite capable of wolfing down the entire new loaf straight out of the bread machine, saturated in butter. And that was when he was a diabetic on insulin. Getting his legs cut off in stages.
He's dead now, unsurprisingly.
I do it the cheap manual way, with raw ingredients. It only takes 90 minutes end to end, and the kneading only takes 5 minutes, using the oven at its lowest temperature to make the bread rise in 30 minutes, then 250C for 30 minutes to bake it.
I make about two a week for myself.
Sorry; its just I was a bit puzzled by your follow up response where you explained -
"... and twice weekly blood glucose testing with a meter and strips. At the beginning of 2018 they stopped me having strips as they said my blood sugars meant that I no longer qualified, as if I'd somehow 'got better', like it was a cold or something!"
The point being that if you were monitoring your own blood glucose then the readings you were getting yourself would surely indicate whether you were "getting better"* or not; regardless of what the doctor or clinic was saying.
Without being in any way being qualified to pontificate on such topics, as if, I would have theough the final arbiter in all of this would be your blood glucose readings. ( Again I'm not qualfied but if it were me I doubt I'd be willing to wait for the results of an annual check up to confirm any improvement.) This is regardless of any information on food labels, or the dietary advice you were formerly following as a result of your previously unsatisfactory blood glucose status. Basically if your self tests indicate permanent improvement then you should be able to loosen up a bit, should you so choose
michael adams
...
By 'getting better' I meant that my 6-monthly assessment by my local surgery showed consistently satisfactory results. Within the diabetic community, you don't 'get better' from diabetes, you just keep it under control* or not, as the case may be. I suppose it's a bit like being an alcoholic. Once an alcoholic, they say always an alcoholic, even if you haven't had alcohol for many years, or so I understand.
The final arbiter of whether a person is diabetic or pre-diabetic are the blood glucose levels as measured by the NHS (the Hba1c test), not an individual's regular testing at home.
Because of financial pressures within the NHS, local practices have been under pressure for several years to stop issuing test meters and test strips, especially to those people who appeared to be only 'glucose intolerant' or what they now call 'pre-diabetic'. I believe this came about because a lot of people who had been issued with meters and strips were not actually making best use of them, and it was costing the NHS a lot of money with little apparent benefit.
I was an exception, and by dint of regular blood testing and careful choice of foods etc I kept my blood glucose levels within the normal range for 18 years, and because of that the NHS decided they didn't need to supply me with glucose strips any more, because I no longer fitted their criteria; I had 'got better' in their thinking, when in reality I was just under very good control. Take away the control, and I'd be back to having high blood glucose levels again.
It was ironic that together with the letter telling me that they weren't going to give me glucose testing strips any more, was a leaflet telling me the limits to which I should be controlling my blood glucose. I likened it to a policeman knocking on your car windscreen and telling you that if you exceeded the speed limit you would be heavily fined, but then ripping out your speedometer so you had no idea how fast you were going.
All this happened a few weeks before my wife died unexpectedly, and the combined effects of losing her and the NHS decision not to continue supplying my glucose strips, knocked the stuffing out of me. I rather took the view that if they didn't care, why should I? So I made no further effort to control my blood glucose, and although I didn't go mad, I did relax a bit on the foods that I ate.
At the same time as my wife died, we were in the process of moving house to a new area and a new medical practice. It took me quite some time to get them to acknowledge that I needed to have my blood sugar tested. As it turned out, my glucose levels had risen over the intervening 18 months, and my most recent Hba1c results showed I was just into the range where they consider me to be diabetic. But as I explained the situation and that I'd been well controlled for the last
18 years, the nurse gave me 3 months reprieve before putting me on tablets (metformin), to see if I could get back to the levels I was at before my wife died. So I've put new batteries in my meter and got new test strips from Amazon, and started getting things back under control, I hope. Metformin isn't known by diabetics as metfartin for no reason!HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.