Recently various petitions have been circulating the Diabetes Online Community, so today let’s pretend to write our own. Tell us who you would write the petition to – a person, an organization, even an object (animate or inanimate) – get creative!! What are you trying to change and what have you experienced that makes you want this change?
We, the undersigned affected by varying degrees of discombobulated pancreases, do hereby petition the restaurant and food industry to aid us in our “guesstimations” and give us clear nutrition information about the foods and drinks we consume outside of our regular comfort zone. Really, just a few items for each morsel of potential blood-sugar havoc would suffice….number of carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber content would go a LONG way towards helping us to ascertain the magic “I need this much insulin to cover this much food” number.
Imagine a world where, after eating a delicious meal of P.F. Chang’s Spicy Chicken, a person’s blood sugar might have a prayer of staying under 300 if they knew exactly the correct number of carbs to bolus for. (Sorry, high school English teacher Mrs. Farlow – I still can’t help ending a sentence in a preposition.) Granted, even knowing those numbers can still evoke a spiral of fatigue-inducing sugar highs, but as we all know, knowing is half the battle!!
Why can’t everything we consume have this info?
P.F. Chang’s kills me every time. Every. single. time.
Yet I keep going back. Such a glutton. Glutton for punishment, too!
Me, too. P.F. Changs and all manner of Chinese foods are a serious weakness for me. And they always-always-always wreck my sugars. It doesn’t matter if I would run a 3 hour triathlon before eating, and even keep running while I was eating, it would wreck them.
SIgned. This would be amazing.
I would be over the MOON if restaurants started voluntarily posting carb counts… even if they are just guesstimates! It’s law here in NYC to have calories post, but I know plenty of people who wouldn’t mind carbohydrates. The two generally go hand-in-hand anyway.
Wow, I wish we had a law to post calorie counts here in NC! That would help with the weight-watching issues, at least 🙂 But, in paying closer attention recently to carbs and calories, I’m always surprised when something has only a few grams of carbs but crazy high calories, and when calories are low but carbs are through the roof. I have taught myself a lot about nutrition over the years, so I do understand why this is so, it just still is surprising for some foods.
I like to check out the menu online. I wish more restaurants flagged gluten-free options, though.
http://www.pfchangs.com/menu/nutritionalinfo.aspx
You know, a LOT of diabetics have celiacs….something about gluten intolerance and diabetes seem to be connected. At least, in my anecdotal polls they do.