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Carbs in fat

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DeusXM

DeusXM

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
Had a clinic meeting today and the doc said something that completely threw me.

According to him, one tablespoon of cooking oil is worth 10g of carbs. Now this sounds suspiciously like nonsense to me - there are no carbs in cooking oil. I think he might have been hinting that fat converts to blood sugar (which again sounds nonsense to me) but I just wanted to check this - particularly as what he's suggesting is that a tablespoon of oil converts pretty much entirely to glucose.
 
DeusXM said:
Had a clinic meeting today and the doc said something that completely threw me.

According to him, one tablespoon of cooking oil is worth 10g of carbs. Now this sounds suspiciously like nonsense to me - there are no carbs in cooking oil. I think he might have been hinting that fat converts to blood sugar (which again sounds nonsense to me) but I just wanted to check this - particularly as what he's suggesting is that a tablespoon of oil converts pretty much entirely to glucose.
Click to expand...

Well put it this way if I have a fatty meal I need a lot more insulin to cover it, than I would a non fatty meal with same carb content.
 
Yup - approx 50% for protein, 10% for fat.

Some of 'us' need to actually inject for these, esp protein. I don't appear to need to and I sort of have this theory which has no medical basis whatsoever, that if I eat enough carbs to keep my body happy (but not too many) then there should be no need whatever for my body to start converting anything else to glucose.

It'd be a cold day in Hell before I ever ate as little CHO as the Bernstein or Atkins diets suggest. I reckon I average between 80 and 110g a day, but I am quite little, not very high, not very wide and weigh about 55kg. I have lost some weight recently, hubby gets dead worried, I tell him it's my bones going porous and weighing less LOL (I do have osteopenia!)
 
This is how it was explained to me. Any food that you eat is converted to energy. Carbs first, they are the easiest for the body to process - either with your own or injected insulin. Protein and fat are also digested and converted to body fuel (glucose), but more slowly and in a much more complicated process.

Ultimately it all comes down to calories, however they go in. Hence why those of us trying to lose weight need to restrict the fat that we eat - it's high calorie. In a starvation/dieting situation when there isn't enough food going in, the body uses stored body fat next and finally muscle tissue to keep the organs functioning.
 
Could be some truth in it, from experience a typical high fat meal with carbohydrates requires much more insulin than a meal with low amounts of fat.

Read somewhere that fat can cause insulin resistance in diabetics, might explain the the need for extra insulin:confused:
 
See, I've heard (and researched) something quite difference.

I'm aware that if I have a meal that contains BOTH fat and carbs, the fat proportion will affect how the dietary carbs are absorbed, which changes my insulin requirements. I'm also aware that a large quantity of food that stretches your duodenum causes a glycogen release from your liver - the theory goes that the stretching tells a healthy pancreas "this is a big 'un! Get working!" causing it to pump out a lot of insulin, while the liver also starts dumping to avoid potential reactive hypoglycaemia. Of course, my pancreas is borked so all that happens is I get the glucose dumping.

I'm not convinced fat on its own causes a glucose rise. I can eat a pack of pork scratchings and my BG will be the same 2 hours later. That's my issue - my doctor, who is supposed to be an expert is telling me that a tablespoon of oil converts to 10g of carbs. I'm not even convinced there is 10g of actual oil in a tablespoon, let alone 10g.

As for calories in = calories out...well, that is partially true but by no means the whole story. Put it this way, my calorie intake has gone up since I switched carbs for fats. I've actually lost weight and I'm thinner than I was 4 years ago as a result. There's a lot more going on related to insulin blocking fat metabolism or promoting fat storage, but that's for another thread.
 
Deus, it just goes to show we're all different and it's down to each of us to find our own way to control our weight and BG. For me as a former morbidly obese T2 still producing my own insulin, it happens to be a very low fat diet that's also low-ish carb, with lots of fruit (yes, fruit) and veg.
 
Protein/fat definitely have an effect on me, but I've never quite pinned down why. The only thing I have trial and error-ed enough to bolus for is peanut butter. If I have 2 slices of toast (40g carbs) I need 4U. If I have peanut butter on the toast I need 6U. This is no-added sugar peanut butter, with practically no carbs in the dessert spoon-or-so that I use, yet I treat it as if it was 20g carbs.
 
I need the same insulin for 2x boiled eggs + 2 slices Burgen toast + yoghurt as banana sandwich + yoghurt

More carbs in sandwich! :confused:
 
1 Tabs = 15 ml. If there are up to 99.9g of fat (varies between 91g and 99.9g LOL) then that means we can say there are 15g of fat in 1 tabs.

If the 'carb equivalent' of that is 10%, then that would be 1.5g wouldn't it?

Let's have a thunk though.

Have you ever eaten one whole tabs of oil? or fried summat which has absorbed as much as that? Even if you fry bread if it's hot enough oil when you start, although the bread is obviously greasy, I don't think you'd lose a tabs in the pan, would you? And if it isn't hot enough it will just be disgusting anyway!
 
I wonder about the large amount of food arriving in the intestine causing a rise in blood glucose
I can eat shedloads of salad or green veg , with olive oil- with no effect. Obviously if eating large amounts of veg such as turnip, carrot etc I would need some insulin for them
On the other hand cheese and eggs seem to spike me even with no carbs- so don;t know if it's the combination of these particular types of fat plus protein.
I seem also to be able to eat a vast portion of fish such as salmon with no rise but a large portion of red meat such as steak will cause a steady rise- perhaps I need to trial this again and perhaps with the correct steak to chip and red wine ratio I could counteract the rise- LOL

Sounds as if the consultant had totally confused his maths- but could have been dangerously misleading for a less informed patient- who may have gone and bolused for oil accordingly
 
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