How are we “Wired to Eat”?
After reading Robb Wolf’s book, Wired to Eat, I decided to go ahead and follow his experiment that entails eating various foods and measuring my glucose levels.
The idea behind it (as I understand) is that a sustained spike in glucose after a meal could indicate some kind of problem with the food consumed.
What’s a sustained spike? Well, the recommendation is to test two hours after eating.
More specifically, Robb recommends eating 50 grams of carbohydrates in just one carbohydrate-rich food at about the same time every morning for breakfast.
Food-Glucose Response Test Summary:
- Pick one food to eat.
- Measure a portion of the food so that it contains 50 grams of carbs.
- Eat it for breakfast (with nothing else).
- After two hours, test your blood glucose.
The Tools:
Blood Glucose Monitor:
Simple Scale:
Carbohydrate Calculator:
- Google it! – or use something like
- MyFitnessPal
Day 1: Bone Broth
91 = fasted blood glucose, 10/2/2017 7:35:00
86 = two hours after eating – blood glucose, 10/2/2017 10:37:00
This was just an experiment because I didn’t have any carbs ready to go for testing. And I already started heating my bone broth – blended with Kerrygold butter and Bulletproof Brain Octane c8/MCT oil.
I’m not sure why my glucose was a bit higher today. Perhaps due to something I ate the day prior?
Day 2: Sweet Potatoes, mashed
76 = fasted, 10/5/2017 7:49:00
78 = two hours after eating, 10/5/2017 10:30:00
Good news! No issues with sweet potatoes 🙂
Day 3: Yellow Finn Potatoes, mashed with sea salt
78 = fasted, 10/6/2017 7:24:00
60 = two hours after eating, 10/6/2017 10:14:00
Whoa, 60? Is that even safe – or normal?! I just looked it up and the Mayo Clinic states:
A normal fasting blood glucose target range for an individual without diabetes is 70-100 mg/dL (3.9-5.6 mmol/L).
What changed? The slight variations this time were:
- Bouncing on my rebounder for five minutes while doing breathing exercises (ie, my normal morning routine that I have skipped lately due to this experiment)
- Adding sea salt to the food
I think I may have to retest but, unfortunately, these potatoes came from my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box and I’m all out!
Day 4: Plantain Chips
86 = fasted, 10/19/2017 7:14
94 = two hours after eating, 10/19/2017 9:45:00
So there were a few somewhat interesting things that happened in today’s experiment.
- +8 point increase. So far the biggest jump in glucose from fasted to post-carb has been just 2 points.
- The measurements seemed off. What was listed on the nutrition label of the package didn’t seem to match my calculations. 28g of food per serving. 20g carbs per serving. I would need 2.5 servings to get to 50g of carbs. This is 70g of food. However, I emptied the entire contents onto my scale and it came to just 75g. And there are 5 servings in a bag. The entire bag should be twice that based on my calculations. Strange.
- One other thing I did differently was my 5 minutes breathing-rebounding 20 minutes after eating. I thought this would LOWER my glucose more than in other experiments in which I’ve made sure not to exercise.
Stay tuned…
Updates coming soon! Check your social media.
What do you think?
Leave questions and comments below…