August 19, 2003
Meal Planning, Food and Diet
Question from Las Vegas, Nevada, USA:
I have type 2 diabetes, and my blood sugars have been around 80-120 mg/dl [4.4-6.7 mmol/L]. However, yesterday I ate a lot of fruit, including a whole sweet medium cantaloupe, and my evening blood sugar was 250 mg/dl [13.9 mmol/L]. Is this a temporary thing caused by the sugar in the cantaloupe? In general, how does fresh fruit sugar, impact sugar level readings in terms of time and absorption?
Answer:
Fruit can have a tremendous impact on raising your blood sugar because it is essentially all sugar with no protein or fat. It is important to limit your servings of fruit each meal and to measure the portion size. Since you have type 2 diabetes and are over 40, I would suggest you have no more than one 15 gram serving per meal. If you have a serving of fruit as a snack, you should have a small amount of protein (such as one ounce of cheese) or some fat (such as four to five nuts) to slow down the breakdown of the carbohydrate in the fruit. By the way, the portion size of cantaloupe is one cup!
JTL
