A Bit More on Ice Cream

I had some more ice cream tonight - normal ice cream, though for me, it was guilt free.  (Sorry, couldn't resist that one.)

I've done some research on ice cream, and consistently the lowest in carbs are plain chocolate flavors, which seem to run about 17g/half cup.  Other varieties may run as much as 25g/half cup for things with high-carb ingredients like Cookies and Cream.  Different flavors vary, so read your labels and dose accordingly.

I've seen other diabetic bloggers (and heard other diabetic friends) complain about ice cream and pizza frequently.  They seem to be relatively hard to bolus for.  (In my case, I went up 60 points after eating it - to 151.  A little higher than I'd like, but no reason to take drastic corrective action.  I took an extra unit and claimed victory.)  I think one of the things is that it's hard to get serving sizes precise with ice cream.  A scoop is close to a half cup, but sometimes the scoop wants to get more, or less.  Or maybe that's just me.

So we come back to the question of Sugar Free ice cream that was raised here a couple of weeks ago.  Is it worth it?

Most "sugar free" items feature about the same overall carb levels as regular ice cream - in the vicinity of 16g/serving.  Usually, a decent percentage of these are "sugar alcohols", a particularly unfortunate term since they are not truly sugar and not truly alcohol.  The reason these chemicals are used is that they are not completely absorbed by the intestines, which means they wind up passing through.  This leads to gas, bloating, and some other unpleasant consequences.  In the class I took from the CDE, we were told that you can subtract half the total "sugar alcohol" content from the net carbs.  So for most sugar free ice cream, that would be about 3g/serving, and most ice creams would net out around 13g/serving.

That may make a huge difference to someone on a very strict carb control diet, but I'm not in that situation.

I've illustrated for several people what it means for me to eat things like that, but showing how much insulin I'd have to take to cover it.  (You should see the way people's eyes pop when I show them what I'd have to take to cover a Sonic slushie.)  Most people, though, are still affected by the perceived horror of taking a shot every time they eat, and so they blow that aspect of it out of proportion.  The simple fact is that 3g more or less per serving is going to mean at most 1 unit of difference for me, and for smaller servings, could get lost as rounding error.

Let me put it another way - to eat anything more than a spoonful or two of ice cream, I would have to take *some* insulin.  So the big deal-maker or deal-breaker is not how much carb is in a given item, but whether or not I have to take insulin for it at all.  Since I'd have to take insulin for "reduced sugar" ice cream anyway, it's not compelling as an option.  Also considering that the most common way to get ice cream at most grocery stores is by the half-gallon (more or less), that would be a lot of servings to get through.  I've found that other members of my family will happily eat the lower-carb varieties of normal ice cream.

Does that make sense?  It seems to be a very hard thing for non-diabetics.  Mostly because a lot of them have a hard time getting past the idea that we inject ourselves a lot, so it's not the extra units that make a difference, it's whether we have to inject ourselves at all.  I'll happily eat something I don't have to stick myself for, so I eat a lot of almonds and peanuts, which net out about 2g carbs/ounce.