Campbell’s Chunky Manhattan Clam Chowder: It’s the potatoes, stupid!

diabetes campbell's soup manhattan clam chowder

The last time I did a blood sugar test on Campbell’s soup, it didn’t go too well! I ate a can of Creamy Chicken & Dumplings and my blood sugar rocketed from 101 to 232. So naturally, I concluded Campbell’s soup = bad.

But I still have a shitload of soup in my kitchen. I kind of used to rely on it when I wasn’t in the mood to cook, which was (and still is) always.

So I decided to try a new approach to eating Campbell’s soup: I removed the potatoes! All of them, or at least pretty close to it.

Blood sugar reading before eating: 113

This reading of 113 was at lunchtime, so I was maybe two hours removed from my usual breakfast of vegetables. Lately, that’s been cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and sometimes a little pepper jack or colby jack cheese.

Blood sugar reading after eating: 148

This reading was about an hour after I finished my lunch. The amount of potato that I took out of the soup was about 100g, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is! That’s a solid handful of potato chunks.

campbell's soup manhattan clam chowder potatoes
This is what 100 grams of potatoes looks like.

My lunch included some Korean vegetables … spinach, mushrooms, and bean sprouts … but I’m very confident that the blood sugar impact of this part of my lunch was small.

diabetes korean vegetables
I added in a little sriracha hot sauce. Good stuff.

So 113 → 148 is pretty good! An increase of 35 ain’t no thang.

Just to make sure, though, I did it again. This time I didn’t eat anything else. No Korean vegetables, just the soup sans potatoes.

Blood sugar reading before eating: 100

This was late in the afternoon when I rolled out of bed.

Blood sugar reading after eating: 119

Once again, I removed the potatoes. 110g of potatoes this time. And my blood sugar went up 19. That’s it! 19. Nice.

I’m going to do this experiment again, but without removing the potatoes. I’m sure the blood sugar spike will be pretty huge.