Everyone eats. Most people enjoy eating. If you don’t, go forth and consume nutritionally optimized shakes/Soylent Green/MREs. Mmmmmmm, can’t you just taste the spinach-carrot-banana-oat-fish oil-boiled chicken breast sludge now?

Anyway . . . we can help maximize our healthy years by both eating good stuff and being physically active, but let’s start with a general look at the one everyone absolutely must do in the immediate to live — eat.

Food has the most noticeable and immediate impact on my blood sugars. Yes, activity and mood and hydration and my adrenaline system and my immune system (and sometimes I have to think the position of the moon relative to Jupiter as Pisces wanes . . . or whatever . . .) have major effects, too, but food is really the biggest thing. And that applies even if you’re not diabetic — your body still has to pump out more (or less) insulin, depending what you consume!

Why should you care? Insulin isn’t the boogeyman some claim it is. When a healthy endocrine system might be forced into overdrive by your food choices, though, it doesn’t hurt to pause and think about the possible effects. And if you’re diabetic, caring about food is critical to success.

So here’s a look at the foods with interesting levels of impact for me.

1. The evil triumvirate:
a) Movie popcorn
b) Pizza
c) Beer

These are all fine at first. I can medicate what seems to be properly for them — the right amount of insulin based on carbs, fat and protein content. Then, a few hours later — BAM!! — my blood sugars skyrocket and stay there for hours, even with repeated extra doses of insulin.

The killer with movie popcorn and commercial pizza is the fat. Specifically, the low-quality saturated fats — high blood sugars multiple hours post-consumption are easily, consistently reproducable in other similar foods. And the increased insulin need happens in EVERYONE — if you have a properly functioning endocrine system, you don’t see or feel it, but it’s there.

Beer is a bit of a mystery. That’s too bad, because I love a delicious Belgian tripel or a room-temp Sweet Baby Jesus.

As long as I medicate for the carbs, beer should either be neutral or even lower my insulin needs (see wine and liquor, below). But nope — sticky high blood sugars are almost guaranteed. I’m not totally sure what that’s about. I’d need to test that out with various styles of beer (but not IPAs, because yuck) and both fasted and fed.

And fit beer into my macros. 🙂

2. Commercial Chinese food

Commercial Chinese food isn’t part of the evil triumvirate (or quartet, as it would be) only because I can generally order steamed chicken or shrimp with steamed veggies, sauce on the side. Trust me, I have an internal pout session when I have to leave the chicken with cashews or moo shu on the table. But order anything more traditional like that in an Americanized Chinese restaurant, and I’m up the creek later as blood sugars go. And that’s almost certainly a low-quality fat issue.

3. Commercial Italian food

See “low-quality fats.” Again. There seems to be a pattern . . .

4. Wine and liquor

These have no effect or only slightly reduce blood sugars . . . at first. A few hours later, though, there will be a blood-sugar drop because the liver is too busy processing the alcohol to pump out the sugar my body needs.

5. Coffee

I will spike with coffee — it requires about five times the amount of insulin its meager 1 gram of carb per serving suggests. Black or not, with stevia or not, cold brew or traditional, with most brands, I have to medicate. [Dunkin Donuts being the exception — I still have to take insulin, but a lot less than with any other coffee. That’s perfect, since Dunkin Donuts has delicious coffee]

Yet, it’s common.

It’s not the caffeine alone, at least not for me. Decaf causes the same spike, while there’s no blood sugar effect with higher-caffeine teas or caffeine-containing diet sodas or zero-calorie energy beverages. And the spike happens whether I have food with my coffee, and no matter the time of day.

For now, it’s a mystery.

6. Fat-free plain Greek yogurt

An odd one again! No spikes with fat-containing yogurt. Since 2% Fage is so damn delicious, though, I don’t mind. 🙂

7. Fiber

This one’s pretty straightforward — the human body cannot process certain kinds of fiber, and that means less insulin required. That’s CERTAIN KINDS. Don’t get duped by the “net carb” craze — while some calories from fiber don’t count, the rest do (along with sugar alcohols), and they can impact blood sugars.

I raise my eyebrow incredulously at you, Halo Top/Enlightened/Quest/Fiber One — we’ll get to you later.