Strange, potatoes can spike and crash my blood sugar faster than anything else. I haven't eaten mashed potato in a decade or so, but IIRC it only took half an hour or so before I was trembling, sweating, feeling very anxious and fearful, and having a strong desire to eat sugar. Not long after I'd become progressively more confused, and sometimes aggressive.
I know 2 T1 diabetics, and both never touch potatoes because of the GI.
Can I ask how you deal with your reactive hypoglycemia? I switched to keto a long time ago, which took me from having hypos multiple times a day to never. But often in late afternoon I start feeling some mild hypo symptoms, even though my blood glucose is stable.
Not only did you boil the potato, but you pre-chewed it too. Mashed potato is about as close as you can get to refined potato (potato flour). What you've created is easily digestable amylopectin - pre-chewed, already gelatinized and suspension with water. The amylase in your saliva can mix extremely well with mashed potatoes, and within minutes that amylopectin will be available as glucose. Maybe you mix in a little fat with butter or oil, but probably not much.
Vs. more or less any other potato cooking method. Even though the starch will have gelatinized with the water present in the potatoe, the potato's structure is more intact than boiling & mashing. Even after chewing the starch is not as well mixed with water, and this will take longer to digest.
Mashed potatoes also contain milk and butter, which don't do well on the satiety index.
But really we are talking about two different things: GI and satiety. Yes potatoes are high GI. It would follow that they will spike your blood sugar. No claims have been made to the contrary.
Satiety is about how full you will feel per calorie eaten of that food. Multiple factors contribute to satiety. Specifically boiled potatoes score super high on the satiety index.
Not mashed potatoes. Not french fries, potatoes gratin, etc.
The topic is only tangentially related to GI.
Don't mean to be cranky here but I was hoping people would talk about the article, the underlying concept (satiety), and the research, instead of going off on lengthy discussions about quasi-related personal anecdotes.
Mashed potato is the worst, by a country mile, but potatoes in any form, hot or cold, will all result in a rapid hypo (just not as rapidly as with mash).
Yeah I was not eating mashed potatoes, those historically have been a nightmare for me, right up there with orange juice for guaranteed ruining a couple hours. I was eating roasted potatoes with olive oil and salt. there was a ton of chewing involved so I was eating 5-6 meals of 200-400 calories, which is, of course, what they say I should be doing with regular food also.
Ah that makes sense. Out of sheer curiosity, can you quantify “heavily” from your experience? Are we talking about 3:1? 10:1? Also, is this by weight or by calorie?
Honestly it's still up in the air right now. I have glucose snacks on hand, I try to monitor how often I eat and not let it go too long, but my Hb a1c is still low and I'm still bothered once or twice a day at least. It's only maybe once a week that it gets bad enough to be super bothersome like you say, basically a panic attack.
I tried keto but it was difficult to get the variety, especially (as you say) when you're intensely craving sugar. It obviously solved the problem but was really challenging to continue, so I only lasted a couple weeks.
How long did you yet keto for, and how strict were you?
I did it for 5 years and found that if you're strict, the carb cravings completely go away after a couple of weeks.
I was in ketosis for 3 weeks, from a total of ~1 month eating a keto diet. I was super, super strict, which was probably part of the problem. I estimated <20g net carbs a day
I know 2 T1 diabetics, and both never touch potatoes because of the GI.
Can I ask how you deal with your reactive hypoglycemia? I switched to keto a long time ago, which took me from having hypos multiple times a day to never. But often in late afternoon I start feeling some mild hypo symptoms, even though my blood glucose is stable.