LIVINGLIVING
A reminder of what can be gleaned from reading a label and how
carbs and sugars are different.
MAKING CARBS COUNT
Cheryl Cormany was
diagnosed with diabetes
at six-years-old. Even
though she was
diagnosed at a young
age, she has thrived with diabetes through
many stages of life. From childhood, to
adolescence, through college and now as
the mom of three boys she loves to share
her diabetes journey with others.
In 2005 Cheryl found her way to a
CARBS VS SUGARS
HOW TO READ LABELS
career helping others with diabetes when
she joined Medtronic as an inside sales
representative. Her career has taken her
through many facets of the company.
She now serves as a clinical program
specialist, working on educational
programs for healthcare providers. She
is happy to share some her diabetes
experiences with the readers of the LOOP
Blog. This article originally appeared
with the title, Carb vs. Sugar: How to
Understand Nutrition Labels (see link at
end for full story). This article has been
amended for a UK audience:
Myth: Carbohydrate grams don't
matter. Sugar grams are the only thing
that increases blood sugar.
Fact: Both sugar grams and
carbohydrate grams have a direct impact
on blood sugar.
Nutrition Labels
The foods we eat break down when
digested and much of what we eat
breaks down into glucose. (Exceptions
to this rule are proteins like meat, poultry
and fish, and non-starchy vegetables).
Insulin is needed when we eat anything
that breaks down into glucose - the
insulin either comes from your pancreas,
or you need to take insulin from a pump
bolus/insulin shot.
Where this gets tricky is that it's easy
to think that glucose is sugar only, which
is not the case. What makes it even
more confusing is that they are both on
the nutrition label and we know that is
where we are supposed to look for our
carbohydrate information.
Carbohydrates are actually comprised
of three nutrients: carbohydrates, fibre,
and sugar. You will see foods that are very
low in sugar but high in carbohydrate.
Looking at a popular unflavoured,
old-fashioned label for a brand of oats,
you would see that the total sugar is 1
gram. Sounds great, right? This item is
practically sugar free, you might think,