Let’s say you just sat down and wolfed a full pint of premium frozen dairy product (ie: the variety made by those two hippie guys from Vermont, or that Danish sounding stuff), You eat the whole thing in ten minutes. How does your body respond in terms of dumping insulin, blood sugar levels, and resulting effects on other organs? Does your pancreas come out in your poop eventually? We’re only interested in the sugar-related effects, which would presumably be similar in either low-fat or full metal versions. We save the discussions of eating a Buick’s-worth of butterfat for another time.
I’m not sure I fully understand the question, but I’ll give it a shot. Any time you dump a large load of sugar into your body (especially simple sugars like glucose, sucrose, fructose and lactose), your pancreas shifts into overdrive and produces a large amount of insulin. Often more insulin is made than is needed, and your blood sugar will drop below fasting levels (aka “sugar crash”). This is one of the pitfalls of our good ol’ American diet, as we tend to eat a lot of simple sugars, and then snack when we hit the sugar crash and set ourselves up for another crash. We wonder why obesity and type II diabetes are on the rise.
The Breyers mint chocolate chip tub in my freezer has 10g of carbohydrates and 20g of fat, with 50% of the calories coming from fat. So, per serving, you’re not getting as much sugar as if you were to have a glass of southern iced tea, but if you eat a quart of ice cream in a single sitting, you still are dumping a large quantity of sugar into your system. If you gotta binge, try whole wheat bread smothered in hummus or pesto.
Are you sure of those numbers? My Breyer’s ice cream contains 8 grams of fat and 18 grams of carbohydrate; your 20/10 ratio would yield far more than 50% calories from fat (not that it isn’t even more of a buttload of sugar, tho’).
Note that ice cream has a lower glycemic index than the whole wheat bread. The presence of fat in the ice cream means that it takes a little longer for the sugar to get into your system.
Yes, back when I was diabetic, some ice cream in a limited quantity was acceptable, but to have that bread with humus, well, to balance, I would have had to find more protein. Humus has carbs and protein and fat. The best kind of ice cream was high fat ice cream with lots of nuts. Low fat icecream or ice milk was right out. Dairy Queen ice cream was undoable.
To some extent what you eat with the carbs makes a difference in how fast you process them. By eating fiber, protein and fat at the same time, you can temper how fast your body needs to respond and process the carbs. Orange juice has a higher glycemic index than orange segments because of this. As a Diabetic to better maintain my blood sugar, I had to balance each carb with a protein. Cottage cheese and fruit. Cheese and crackers. That meant real cheese with very few or no carbs not cheese food.
There are some studies released in the last year that say if you give your pancreas a lot to deal with at times and not much at others on a regular basis, you may be doing yourself a favor. The ability to respond quickly with enough insulin is muted if everyday you eat a diet suitable for maintaining type II diabetes. This is assuming you are not already suffering from diabetes. I remember the study because I had GD at the time.
Duly noted. I recall that, now that you mention it. I’m not as familiar with glycemic indices as I could be, as I don’t normally deal with the nutritional side of diabetes. I could bore you to tears with the testing side, though.
Typing one-handed here ;), with the ice cream carton in the other: Breyers Choc Chip Cookie Dough (sorry about the mistake), 1/2 cup serving, 180 cal, 90 cal from fat, total fat = 10g, total carbs = 20g 17 of that from “sugars.”