Banana and blood sugar

How does a banana effect your blood sugar?

12:30 blood sugar 121, Ate 1 banana
1:00 ate a large bowl of cabbage and white bean soup
1:30 blood sugar 146
2:30 blood sugar 151

Conclusion: Eating a banana isn't really a problem for a diabetic so long as you aren't covering it in chocolate and grape jelly.

Pan fried banana

I'm beginning to change my mind about bananas. I used to think diabetics should avoid them (I don't take insulin). But I'm coming around to a different opinion about them more recently.

Here's a quick hot banana dish that has some ingredients in addition to the banana that can be very helpful.

Slice a banana longways in 3 parts. Coat the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil. Bring to a high heat and lay the bananas in the oil. Sprinkle the up side liberally with powdered cinnamon. When slightly browned turn over, sprinkle the other side with cinnamon. When browned remove bananas to a plate and squeeze the juice of a lime over them. Serve hot.

The cinnamon helps in insulin production (and helps cholesterol also). The lime juice acts as both a diuretic which can help control hypertension and to restore depleted potassium. Of course we all know how useful olive oil is.

290 calories, 125 from fat
4mg sodium
2 g. protein
47 g carbs
29 g complex carbs

Should diabetics eat bananas?

My guess is that diabetics really shouldn't eat bananas.

They're a healthy food generally, but the sugar content is just too much for the typical diabetic. At least that's the general impression I have. Like almost everything else related to diet for those with diabetes, it's never clear cut.

If you think of the carb content of an "average" serving of food as about 15 grams, then the 27 grams in a banana is pretty high. I'm not positive that 15 grams is the right per serving benchmark but it's the rule-of-thumb they taught in the VA hospital sponsered seminars on diets for diabetics that I went to a couple of years ago.

The party line is that a serving of fresh fruit is a serving of fresh fruit, but I'm not convinced.

Banana is a very sweet fruit (even if it doesn't taste sugary) and some of the more rational advisors suggest keeping those serving sizes of very sweet fruit small and limiting them to inclusion with meals that have some fat and protein (fat and protein help the body process the high sugar).

Bananas

I've often wondered about sugar in bananas.

Supposdly an average banana has about 27 grams of carbohydrates.