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I've been using a CGM on and off for the last year, and it has given me a whole new perspective about food and nutrition. I discovered that a bunch of things I

I've been using a CGM on and off for the last year, and it has given me a whole new perspective about food and nutrition. I discovered that a bunch of things I thought were reasonably healthy actually caused huge glycemic spikes -- e.g., white bread in the morning, croissants, dried mangos, excessive amount of fruits, etc. I also discovered the importance of what you eat for your first meal in the day (either breakfast or lunch), or how to better order what you eat (fibers, fat and protein first, carbs last), light movement after eating reduces 20+ mg/dl, and more. At this point I don't even need to wear a CGM every day; I can tell my glucose level just by thinking of what I ate earlier. I still wear one when I'm traveling for work, as I know I'll have less control over food and calorie intake (airplane meals, restaurants, team lunches, etc). ps: if you're interested in learning more even without using a CGM, strongly recommend "Glucose Revolution" [1]. [1] Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar - https://www.amazon.com/Glucose-Revolution-Life-Changing-Power-Balancing/dp/1982179414 https://www.amazon.com/Glucose-Revolution-Life-Changing-Powe...

alexey-salmin 1y ago
> I discovered that a bunch of things I thought were reasonably healthy actually caused huge glycemic spikes -- e.g., white bread in the morning, croissants, dried mangos, excessive amount of fruits, etc. I wonder if this amounts to optimization of an easy-to-measure and reasonably-looking but incorrect metric, much like the previous "common sense" wave of "fat makes you fat" that led several generations into a dead end. You assume above that glycemic spikes are unhealthy which I think was never proven for the general population. Eating too much sugar or eating too much in general is bad, but I'm not aware of evidence that croissants kill you if you eat reasonably. Another thing to note: one of the potential suspects in the obesity epidemic is HFCS, and fructose doesn't actually cause glycemic spikes. If this turns out to be true, then parallels with the "fat makes you fat" theory become uncannily strong. I tend to think this could be the case because it matches my personal observations. I moved to France a few years ago and the amount of croissants I and people around me consume is at the stereotypes level. My weight is stable but each time I go to US for a couple of weeks I bring back 3-5 extra kilos. Something is seriously different between the food here and there, and I don't think it's glycemic spikes per se.
- bboygravity 1y ago
  The difference is corn syrup (in everything) vs sugar from sugar beets. Corn syrup has way more calories por unit sweetness.
  - aw1621107 1y ago
    > Corn syrup has way more calories por unit sweetness. I'm not so sure about that? IIRC fructose is sweeter than sucrose and fructose concentrations aren't that much lower than in sucrose (fructose/glucose ratios of 42/58, 55/45, and 65/35 seem to be common from a quick search, comapred to 50/50 for sucrose). In addition the USDA also says fructose has fewer calories per gram than sucrose, which would also point towards HFCS having fewer calories per unit sweetness. Both those would seem to point towards HFCS having fewer calories per unit sweetness, not "way more".
- andrewflnr 1y ago
  I only casually follow these things, but my understanding is that interest in glycemic spikes is not really about obesity or fat at all, but more about diabetes-related issues, insulin resistance I think.
  - mathgeek 1y ago
    There's a popular subculture moment happening where non-diabetic folks are tracking their glucose since it's now possible to do without great expense. Similar to recent trends with step counters, heart rate monitors, etc. The necessity of tracking for diabetics has led to the opportunity for others.
- Etheryte 1y ago
  Large glycemic spikes are are an issue, but the problem is not obesity. Obesity is concerned with calories in and calories out and our current obesity epidemic is largely attributed to the fact that we eat more calories and move less. Most other discussion points are secondary to that fact. Glycemic spikes on the other hand are linked to increased insulin resistance, heightened risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and so on. The two are linked, but not the same problem.
DoingIsLearning 1y ago
> At this point I don't even need to wear a CGM every day; I can tell my glucose level just by thinking of what I ate earlier. Would be interesting to create some form of model of that and see how accurately you could 'guess' gliglycemia levels for a specific individual just by knowing biometric info and accurate food intake. As in could you potentially appify your newly acquired intuition?
- dbbljack 1y ago
  highly interesting!
- hammyhavoc 1y ago
  Glucose awareness is an ever-moving target. It's why it can be dangerous for anyone with diabetes.
Llamamoe 1y ago
> I discovered that a bunch of things I thought were reasonably healthy actually caused huge glycemic spikes -- e.g., white bread in the morning, croissants, dried mangos, excessive amount of fruits, etc. It's baffling that those things are considered healthy in the first place - white bread, pasta, rice, potatoes contain so much starch(which is rapidly broken down into glucose) that their glycemic index is higher than that of table sugar. Likewise, the entire reason why fruit are tasty is because they're sugar bombs. The absorption is slightly slowed by cell wall digestion, and they have antioxidants, vitamins, etc. But still. It's sugar. > I also discovered the importance of what you eat for your first meal in the day (either breakfast or lunch), or how to better order what you eat (fibers, fat and protein first, carbs last), light movement after eating reduces 20+ mg/dl, and more. Having read science on the topic, you're extremely right on botr counts - limiting carbs in the first meal of the day moderates glucose spikes for the entire rest of the day, and moving after high carb meals is critical because muscles uptake glucose independent of insulin signaling, massively reducing the stress on your metabolism.
lurking_swe 1y ago
i’m confused why you considered this healthy? > white bread in the morning, croissants, dried mangos, excessive amount of fruits, etc. white bread is basically 100% carbs (converts to sugar). croissants aren’t much better _and_ have unhealthy fat (butter). Dried mangoes pack the sugar of the fruit without much of the fiber and water (speeds up the processing of the sugar). Healthy breakfast would be like 2 eggs with small slice of toast on the side. Or a small omelette with cheese and mushrooms and spinach. Or perhaps steel cut oats, with thin sliced banana. Basically - real food that also not loaded with carbs and sugars. Carbs are OK if you actually need them (workouts, etc). Office workers don’t need lots of carbs. Granted, “healthy” is a spectrum…some people would consider it a win to not smoke, drink soda, etc. And you’re 100% right about eating fiber first. It greatly slows down sugar absorption/processing! And reduces the sugar spike. That’s an advanced tip most don’t know about.
- ajb 1y ago
  Dried mangoes don't have fibre? How does drying them remove it?
  - fnands 1y ago
    They do have fibre, but a large part of (non-dried) mangos are water. If you remove the water, then the sugar density per volume/weight goes up a lot. This makes it easier to consume much larger volumes of dried mangos vs raw mangos. This basically goes for all dried fruits. Eating three mangoes in a sitting feels like a huge amount of food. Eating three mangos worth of dried mango is pretty easy.
    - guiambros 1y ago
      Exactly. Dried fruits (and dried mangos in particular) may seem healthy, but you should treat them like candy. In fact it's worse than candy - at least chocolate has fat, which makes you feel full, while dried mango is pure sugars and carbs. You can easily eat 100g of dried mango, not realizing it packs 80g of carbs (!). That's enough to create a huge glycemic spike, followed by an immediate crash half hour later. In the end of the day, fructose and sucrose are sugars after all, so treat them accordingly. ps: same for fruit juices. Outside of a few vitamins (which you probably don't need, if you eat a healthy diet), juices are not much better than sodas, and pack a tremendous amount of sugar.

alexey-salmin 1y ago

> I discovered that a bunch of things I thought were reasonably healthy actually caused huge glycemic spikes -- e.g., white bread in the morning, croissants, dried mangos, excessive amount of fruits, etc. I wonder if this amounts to optimization of an easy-to-measure and reasonably-looking but incorrect metric, much like the previous "common sense" wave of "fat makes you fat" that led several generations into a dead end. You assume above that glycemic spikes are unhealthy which I think was never proven for the general population. Eating too much sugar or eating too much in general is bad, but I'm not aware of evidence that croissants kill you if you eat reasonably. Another thing to note: one of the potential suspects in the obesity epidemic is HFCS, and fructose doesn't actually cause glycemic spikes. If this turns out to be true, then parallels with the "fat makes you fat" theory become uncannily strong. I tend to think this could be the case because it matches my personal observations. I moved to France a few years ago and the amount of croissants I and people around me consume is at the stereotypes level. My weight is stable but each time I go to US for a couple of weeks I bring back 3-5 extra kilos. Something is seriously different between the food here and there, and I don't think it's glycemic spikes per se.

bboygravity 1y ago
The difference is corn syrup (in everything) vs sugar from sugar beets. Corn syrup has way more calories por unit sweetness.
- aw1621107 1y ago
  > Corn syrup has way more calories por unit sweetness. I'm not so sure about that? IIRC fructose is sweeter than sucrose and fructose concentrations aren't that much lower than in sucrose (fructose/glucose ratios of 42/58, 55/45, and 65/35 seem to be common from a quick search, comapred to 50/50 for sucrose). In addition the USDA also says fructose has fewer calories per gram than sucrose, which would also point towards HFCS having fewer calories per unit sweetness. Both those would seem to point towards HFCS having fewer calories per unit sweetness, not "way more".
andrewflnr 1y ago
I only casually follow these things, but my understanding is that interest in glycemic spikes is not really about obesity or fat at all, but more about diabetes-related issues, insulin resistance I think.
- mathgeek 1y ago
  There's a popular subculture moment happening where non-diabetic folks are tracking their glucose since it's now possible to do without great expense. Similar to recent trends with step counters, heart rate monitors, etc. The necessity of tracking for diabetics has led to the opportunity for others.
Etheryte 1y ago
Large glycemic spikes are are an issue, but the problem is not obesity. Obesity is concerned with calories in and calories out and our current obesity epidemic is largely attributed to the fact that we eat more calories and move less. Most other discussion points are secondary to that fact. Glycemic spikes on the other hand are linked to increased insulin resistance, heightened risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and so on. The two are linked, but not the same problem.

DoingIsLearning 1y ago

> At this point I don't even need to wear a CGM every day; I can tell my glucose level just by thinking of what I ate earlier. Would be interesting to create some form of model of that and see how accurately you could 'guess' gliglycemia levels for a specific individual just by knowing biometric info and accurate food intake. As in could you potentially appify your newly acquired intuition?

dbbljack 1y ago
highly interesting!
hammyhavoc 1y ago
Glucose awareness is an ever-moving target. It's why it can be dangerous for anyone with diabetes.

Llamamoe 1y ago

> I discovered that a bunch of things I thought were reasonably healthy actually caused huge glycemic spikes -- e.g., white bread in the morning, croissants, dried mangos, excessive amount of fruits, etc. It's baffling that those things are considered healthy in the first place - white bread, pasta, rice, potatoes contain so much starch(which is rapidly broken down into glucose) that their glycemic index is higher than that of table sugar. Likewise, the entire reason why fruit are tasty is because they're sugar bombs. The absorption is slightly slowed by cell wall digestion, and they have antioxidants, vitamins, etc. But still. It's sugar. > I also discovered the importance of what you eat for your first meal in the day (either breakfast or lunch), or how to better order what you eat (fibers, fat and protein first, carbs last), light movement after eating reduces 20+ mg/dl, and more. Having read science on the topic, you're extremely right on botr counts - limiting carbs in the first meal of the day moderates glucose spikes for the entire rest of the day, and moving after high carb meals is critical because muscles uptake glucose independent of insulin signaling, massively reducing the stress on your metabolism.

lurking_swe 1y ago

i’m confused why you considered this healthy? > white bread in the morning, croissants, dried mangos, excessive amount of fruits, etc. white bread is basically 100% carbs (converts to sugar). croissants aren’t much better _and_ have unhealthy fat (butter). Dried mangoes pack the sugar of the fruit without much of the fiber and water (speeds up the processing of the sugar). Healthy breakfast would be like 2 eggs with small slice of toast on the side. Or a small omelette with cheese and mushrooms and spinach. Or perhaps steel cut oats, with thin sliced banana. Basically - real food that also not loaded with carbs and sugars. Carbs are OK if you actually need them (workouts, etc). Office workers don’t need lots of carbs. Granted, “healthy” is a spectrum…some people would consider it a win to not smoke, drink soda, etc. And you’re 100% right about eating fiber first. It greatly slows down sugar absorption/processing! And reduces the sugar spike. That’s an advanced tip most don’t know about.

ajb 1y ago
Dried mangoes don't have fibre? How does drying them remove it?
- fnands 1y ago
  They do have fibre, but a large part of (non-dried) mangos are water. If you remove the water, then the sugar density per volume/weight goes up a lot. This makes it easier to consume much larger volumes of dried mangos vs raw mangos. This basically goes for all dried fruits. Eating three mangoes in a sitting feels like a huge amount of food. Eating three mangos worth of dried mango is pretty easy.
  - guiambros 1y ago
    Exactly. Dried fruits (and dried mangos in particular) may seem healthy, but you should treat them like candy. In fact it's worse than candy - at least chocolate has fat, which makes you feel full, while dried mango is pure sugars and carbs. You can easily eat 100g of dried mango, not realizing it packs 80g of carbs (!). That's enough to create a huge glycemic spike, followed by an immediate crash half hour later. In the end of the day, fructose and sucrose are sugars after all, so treat them accordingly. ps: same for fruit juices. Outside of a few vitamins (which you probably don't need, if you eat a healthy diet), juices are not much better than sodas, and pack a tremendous amount of sugar.