Hey diabetics: THIS is how you eat a Burger King Whopper!

diabetes burger king whopper

Let’s get the usual caveats out of the way first.

  1. No matter who you are, fast food is never healthy.
  2. 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.”

diabetes burger king whopper

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.

diabetes burger king whopper
Wow, this Whopper looks like shit!

All right, let’s look at how I ate these two Burger King Whoppers without dying.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

diabetes burger king whopper
See that bun on the right? DON’T EAT IT!!!!

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.

diabetes burger king whopper

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.

diabetes burger king whopper
Believe it or not, this monstrosity tasted MOSTLY like a Whopper.