What Food Causes Blood Sugar to Rise?

Since Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) is a condition where your body has trouble dealing with blood sugar, a reasonable question would be ‘what foods contain sugar?’.

The first thing to understand is that when we talk about blood sugar, we really talk about blood glucose levels. Glucose is the name of the type of sugar that’s in the blood.

So, what is glucose? 

This is the name of one single ‘simple’ sugar molecule. Another word for this is a ‘simple carbohydrate’. 

‘Carbohydrates have a VERY strong stimulating effect on our blood sugar.’

When it comes to food there are many different types of carbs, but most of them will be converted to glucose in the body. 

So, what happens is that when we eat food containing carbs, the digestion process breaks them down into glucose. The glucose then enters the bloodstream, raising our blood sugar. 

Quite straightforward so far, right?

But what you might not be aware of is that this is true for almost ALL types of carbohydrates. Even savoury ones that don’t taste sweet.

It has nothing to do with taste buds…

This is why we talk about the fact that ‘we need to reduce the amount of carbohydrates when we’re diagnosed as T2 Diabetic’.

Carbs have a VERY strong stimulating effect on our blood sugar because, once they have gone through the digestion process, they enter the bloodstream as sugars (glucose).

Foods that contain the most carbohydrates

A lot of regular meals are based around carbohydrates, but it can be very difficult to visualise just by how much. 

To make it easier, the image below shows clearly how different ‘everyday foods’ affect blood glucose compared with one teaspoon of table sugar. Put into these simple terms it’s quite clear to see where the problem lies.

What do we need to do?

When you have raised blood sugar levels, the most important thing you have to do is to start looking at food from a 'blood sugar perspective'. Not from a general ‘healthy food’ perspective. 

This means that some of the foods that are super healthy from a ‘general health' perspective are not suitable for someone with diabetes. This is probably one of the most important aspects that is missed when people are trying to make changes to their diet. 

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