I’ve just started the diabetic exchange diet and I’m wondering how to count exchanges of pre-packaged foods.?
When on Weight Watchers, they had a calculator you could purchase that when input with calories, fat and fiber grams would tell you the amount of ”points” each food was valued. Does anyone know if there is any sort of calculator similar to this for determining the exchange values of packages foods, such as the 100 calorie snacks, for example? Any help will be much appreciated!
WOW ! This is your lucky day. Forget the exchange diet. You need the GLYCEMIC INDEX food plan. Its a list of 2,480 food that tell you their index and load. I will be your eating bible for life.Heres the website:http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm
The glycemic index (GI) is a numerical system of measuring how much of a rise in circulating blood sugar a carbohydrate triggers–the higher the number, the greater the blood sugar response. So a low GI food will cause a small rise, while a high GI food will trigger a dramatic spike. A list of carbohydrates with their glycemic values is shown below. A GI is 70 or more is high, a GI of 56 to 69 inclusive is medium, and a GI of 55 or less is low.
The glycemic load (GL) is a relatively new way to assess the impact of carbohydrate consumption that takes the glycemic index into account, but gives a fuller picture than does glycemic index alone. A GI value tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate turns into sugar. It doesn’t tell you how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food. You need to know both things to understand a food’s effect on blood sugar. That is where glycemic load comes in. The carbohydrate in watermelon, for example, has a high GI. But there isn’t a lot of it, so watermelon’s glycemic load is relatively low. A GL of 20 or more is high, a GL of 11 to 19 inclusive is medium, and a GL of 10 or less is low.
Foods that have a low GL almost always have a low GI. Foods with an intermediate or high GL range from very low to very high GI.
Both GI and GL are listed here. The GI is of foods based on the glucose index–where glucose is set to equal 100. The other is the glycemic load, which is the glycemic index divided by 100 multiplied by its available carbohydrate content (i.e. carbohydrates minus fiber) in grams. (The "Serve size (g)" column is the serving size in grams for calculating the glycemic load; for simplicity of presentation I have left out an intermediate column that shows the available carbohydrates in the stated serving sizes.) Take, watermelon as an example of calculating glycemic load. Its glycemic index is pretty high, about 72. According to the calculations by the people at the University of Sydney’s Human Nutrition Unit, in a serving of 120 grams it has 6 grams of available carbohydrate per serving, so its glycemic load is pretty low, 72/100*6=4.32, rounded to 4.
I have tried them all and this is the best and easiest. Do it…>
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5 Responses to “I’ve just started the diabetic exchange diet and I’m wondering how to count exchanges of pre-packaged foods.?”
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I followed the exchange diet for many years trying to ward off the diagnosis of diabetes. It does NOT work! It contains the same amount of grams of carb as a normal food plan does.
http://www.nutritiondata.com has the calculator you are looking for and most packaged foods are in their data banks.
I recommend you go to http://www.mendosa.com for the Glycemic Index and choose from medium to low GI foods. They also have a huge number of packaged foods in the data bank.
You can go back to WW for good nutrition for your diabetes as well. Some people do fine on their plan.
References :
Sorry, but any doctor in this day and age who recommends the exchange diet needs to be given the boot. It’s archaic and incredibly imprecise, and your blood glucose numbers will suffer for it. I would recommend you go to some diabetes education classes through your local hospital, where they will teach you carbohydrate counting. This is the accepted and widely recommended way to handle your diet.
To answer your question, one "bread or starch" exchange is 15g of carb. The 100-calorie Oreos are 19g, so that would roughly count as one exchange. Note I said "roughly". That’s the problem with the exchange program. Even just that extra 4g of carb can throw your BG’s out of whack, especially if you’re talking about multiple servings.
References :
Type 1 for 25 years
WOW ! This is your lucky day. Forget the exchange diet. You need the GLYCEMIC INDEX food plan. Its a list of 2,480 food that tell you their index and load. I will be your eating bible for life.Heres the website:http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm
The glycemic index (GI) is a numerical system of measuring how much of a rise in circulating blood sugar a carbohydrate triggers–the higher the number, the greater the blood sugar response. So a low GI food will cause a small rise, while a high GI food will trigger a dramatic spike. A list of carbohydrates with their glycemic values is shown below. A GI is 70 or more is high, a GI of 56 to 69 inclusive is medium, and a GI of 55 or less is low.
The glycemic load (GL) is a relatively new way to assess the impact of carbohydrate consumption that takes the glycemic index into account, but gives a fuller picture than does glycemic index alone. A GI value tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate turns into sugar. It doesn’t tell you how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food. You need to know both things to understand a food’s effect on blood sugar. That is where glycemic load comes in. The carbohydrate in watermelon, for example, has a high GI. But there isn’t a lot of it, so watermelon’s glycemic load is relatively low. A GL of 20 or more is high, a GL of 11 to 19 inclusive is medium, and a GL of 10 or less is low.
Foods that have a low GL almost always have a low GI. Foods with an intermediate or high GL range from very low to very high GI.
Both GI and GL are listed here. The GI is of foods based on the glucose index–where glucose is set to equal 100. The other is the glycemic load, which is the glycemic index divided by 100 multiplied by its available carbohydrate content (i.e. carbohydrates minus fiber) in grams. (The "Serve size (g)" column is the serving size in grams for calculating the glycemic load; for simplicity of presentation I have left out an intermediate column that shows the available carbohydrates in the stated serving sizes.) Take, watermelon as an example of calculating glycemic load. Its glycemic index is pretty high, about 72. According to the calculations by the people at the University of Sydney’s Human Nutrition Unit, in a serving of 120 grams it has 6 grams of available carbohydrate per serving, so its glycemic load is pretty low, 72/100*6=4.32, rounded to 4.
I have tried them all and this is the best and easiest. Do it…>
References :
http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm
The exchange diet is a very dated method to use. I’d recommend that you learn to count carbs instead. I did the exchange diet back in the 1970′s. Now we have Nutrition labels and can use them to be very precise about the carbs in each serving in a package.
To count carbs, you start with a set limit of carbs per meal. My dietician recommended 30 carbs for breakfast, 30 for lunch and up to 45 carbs for supper. Because I’m on insulin I’m allowed snacks of about 15 carbs each, 2 or 3 times a day, so my blood sugar doesn’t go too low.
If your exchange diet allows one carb choice, that’s equal to 15 carbs. Two carb choices equals 30 carbs. Its simple to convert to counting carbs instead of exchanges.
There are websites that teach you how to count carbs. Try this one…
http://www.diabetesnet.com/diabetes_food_diet/countcarbs.php
Read packages and you can easily tell how many carbs you are eating. For produce, you can use a carb counter online,
try
http://www.thedailyplate.com/
http://www.calorieking.com/
http://www.carb-counter.org/
Some of the websites I have listed above, will allow you to search the carb content of brand name foods, as well as things like fruit, veggies, and so on. You’ll find them VERY useful.
There are carb counting books too, but make sure you get one that gives NET carbs. I find the internet carb counters much more useful than books, which often leave out the foods I want to eat.
Good luck!
References :
The exchange diet is perfectly fine, provided you keep in mind other things like GI as well.
To answer your question though, in my personal experience of exchange counting (the way ive been taught) its based off carbohydrate amount. About 15 grams of carbohydrate = 1 exchange, so when you look at prepackaged foods. Although I suggest you talk to your doctor since you might’ve been taught about it differently (since calories isnt the same as carbohydrates).
Using only GI is just as flawed as relying only carbohydrate quantity (exchanges) – amount is important too. Saying carbohydrate content doesn’t matter is like saying "well, feathers are lighter than stones, so I can carry as many feathers as I like" eating too much carbohydrate will raise blood sugars, whether it’s low GI or not. As well, not a whole heap of prepacked foods (which is what the question is about) has the GI labelled on it, which is what the question is about.
The exchange diet has been around for longer and has had much more scientific research conducted on it. There is a strong theoretical basis for both approaches and they aren’t mutually exclusive, so feel free to use both. This combined approach is actually called Glycemic Load.
Pretty much what I do with prepacked foods is look at how many exchanges is in it and the ingredients and what proportion of the carbohydrate is sugar etc. and make an estimate of GI.
References :
Glycemic load on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_load