Let’s get the usual caveats out of the way first.
- No matter who you are, fast food is never healthy.
- Whoppers and Big Macs should not be a regular part of your diet.
I am Captain Obvious, and you’re welcome!
So I literally live about 100 yards from a Burger King. I walk past it every single day, and I usually just look longingly at their huge burger pictures … and then I keep walking.
But a few days ago, they had that damn 1+1 Whopper thing going on. In Korea, “1+1” means “buy one, get one free.”
So I thought about it carefully.
I have goddam diabetes. I also have gout.
And I concluded that eating two Whoppers would be a terrible idea, so naturally I DECIDED TO EAT TWO WHOPPERS.
All right, let’s look at how I ate these two Burger King Whoppers without dying.
- For starters, I ordered the Whoppers with NO TOMATO. How much did that save me in the glucose department? I dunno! But I’m quite sure it helped at least a little.
- After getting my Whoppers, I took them home and made one more important modification: I removed the top bun and replaced it with a thick bed of iceberg lettuce. You can use whatever lettuce you want, but the point is to get rid of that huge bun!
You’re still going to get a blood sugar hit from the bottom bun and the ketchup, but this stripped-down Whopper should be much easier on your ‘beetus than if you don’t make any changes at all.
Blood sugar reading before eating: 106
This reading of 106 was on a Saturday evening. I don’t think I had taken my daily Diabex/Metformin yet.
Blood sugar reading after eating: 164
This reading was about an hour after I finished my Whopper.
An increase of 58 … from a WHOPPER! That’s totally OK in my book. But remember, it was 1+1, so I ate the other Whopper the next day.
Blood sugar reading before eating: 120
This reading of 120 was on Sunday night. I had taken my Diabex/Metformin like 7 hours earlier, so that wouldn’t have been a factor here.
Blood sugar reading after eating: 152
This reading was about an hour after I finished Whopper #2.
Holy crap! So here’s where we landed:
Whopper #1: 106 → 164 (+58 mg/dL)
Whopper #2: 120 → 152 (+32 mg/dL)
There is no question in my mind that eating a Whopper in its original form would be disastrous. After all, I once ate a BLT chicken sandwich from Burger King, and that sent my glucose through the roof.
But this Whopper seems very doable. And the same no-tomato-no-top-bun thing might also work with other Burger King sandwiches.
I definitely shouldn’t be eating more Whoppers in the future because GOUT (beef is a big no-no), but who am I kidding. I live on the edge of madness! So it might happen again at some point, but probably not for a while.
I’ll get one of those Double Cheeseburgers they have with just meat, cheese & bread. It doesn’t really blow up my blood sugar that much.
Nice. I would love to add cheeseburgers to my rotation, but (sigh) … gout! T_T
As I sit eating a wonderful vegetable pasta dinner, my wife complemented it with last night’s Whopper buns which looked saturated with something and so yummy they were I had to look up that they couldn’t be good for me, age 64. Found your comments, read out loud to my wife, and we died laughing and crying for our health. Thanks for touching our “hearts”! OMG!
Haven’t done a Whopper yet, but I did a Wendy’s single. I took everything off their bun and put it on one slice of Pepperidge Farm 15 grain whole wheat bread. I like yellow mustard on my burgers, which for some reason Wendy’s doesn’t use, so I covered the bread and meat with it. I didn’t write down the numbers, but I didn’t take a very big hit. So I’m pretty sure when I get around to it a Whopper will be about the same.
Yesterday was $1.00 Whopper Day at BK, so I bought one. I ate it this morning for breakfast, but I ditched all of their bun, and put everything on one slice of Pepperidge Farm 15 grain whole wheat bread. I added some yellow mustard. After one hour blood sugar went from 127 to 122. So I would say that’s a win. After reading some, and watching YouTube videos I have come around to your way of thinking on checking blood sugar at one hour. That way you catch the spike the meal caused, rather than checking after it is on the way down.
Yeah! One hour for me. I hope you enjoyed those $1 Whoppers!!