Look, sometimes you just want what you want! And a brand new Vietnamese restaurant just opened around the corner from me, so I suddenly had the itch for some pho. It’s been years since I last had it in my pre-beetus days, so I figured ehh why not.
Pho is a noodle soup that is made with rice noodles, and we all know that rice is the enemy of anyone with goddam diabetes. Cry emoji.
But HOW BAD would my blood glucose spike be? I knew the spike was coming, so it was just a matter of how big a spike I’d get hit with.
Ok so here’s what I did. First, I weighed the noodles which, thankfully, were in a separate plastic bag cuz I ordered it to-go.
The noodles weighed in at 380 grams (about 13 oz., or over 3/4 of a pound). I immediately removed 150 grams, or about 40% of the noodles. Why 150g? I dunno! It was an arbitrary amount. I just knew that eating ALL of the noodles would be a really bad idea, so I did the smart thing and took some of the noodles out (to be eaten later!).
Blood sugar reading before eating: 92
This reading of 92 was earlier today. I first woke up feeling lightheaded and weak due to LOW blood sugar. I was at 57! So I ate a quick pizza taco, chugged half a can of actual Dr. Pepper (not the Zero Sugar kind), and went back to bed for several hours.
Then I woke up, took the foster pup out … Terry died 🙁 and now I’m fostering a little Chihuahua mix I named Cha Cha … anyway, I took Cha Cha out and picked up the pho on the way home. No Diabex and a very empty stomach, and I was at 92.
Blood sugar reading after eating: 237
This reading was about an hour after finishing my 230 grams of pho.
It’s a high number, definitely higher than you ever want to see … but I was kind of shocked that it wasn’t higher!
I honestly would not have been surprised to see it closer to 300. But 237? Ok, not great, but I’ll take it.
And just for fun, I did two more readings after this.
30 minutes later, I was at 228.
30 minutes after that, I was at 179.
So the final tally, from before eating to two hours after eating, is:
92 → 237 → 228 → 179
Later on, after my glucose had fallen again, I ate the other 150g of pho.
93 → 175
I didn’t bother doing any additional tests because I think this result pretty fairly reflects the smaller quantity of noodles.
And the moral of the story, which we knew before this dumb story even began, is that Vietnamese pho noodles are BAD! If you have goddam diabetes, you should probably avoid them.
I plan to avoid them, too … but I’ll eat them again someday. We all have our moments of stupidity, so pick your battles wisely! And try to make your mistakes when your glucose is already on the low side.
I’m also a massive fan of pho but also have T2 ‘beetus, so I thought I had to completely give that up. However I did eventually decide to try going for pho anyways but asked the server to not give me noodles and instead give me extra bean sprouts. Once the food arrived, I put in loads of bean sprouts into the still hot broth and let them soak for a bit. I know it sounds odd but to me that became a surprisingly satisfying substitution for the rice noodles and have been doing that ever since!
Also, shirataki noodles are a good substitution for rice noodles if you don’t like the idea of bean sprouts. They’re made of konjac plant, super low in carbs and caloric count, and it contains a bit of fibre. I prefer to be on the safe side and only have shirataki noodles on days when I have a workout plan, but definitely gives those a try and see how they work out for you!
Hi Asai, thanks for commenting. The bean sprouts are a great idea!