My blood sugar is a little high, can I drink porridge?

A netizen asked: My grandmother was diagnosed with high blood sugar some time ago, so she doesn’t dare to eat too much white rice and drinks more porridge.

But I heard that it is best for diabetic patients to drink less porridge. Is this true?

Because porridge tastes light and is easy to digest, people have always believed that porridge is a health-preserving staple food.

Moreover, compared with rice, porridge contains more water and less starch, so many diabetic patients prefer to drink porridge.

However, porridge is not as suitable for diabetics as everyone thinks.

In fact, after eating rice, the postprandial blood sugar of diabetic patients is relatively stable; but after eating porridge, the postprandial blood sugar increases significantly, which is similar to the blood sugar-raising effect of consuming the same amount of calories of glucose.

That is to say, compared with rice, porridge has a greater impact on postprandial blood sugar in diabetic patients.

This is related to the glycemic index (GI) of food.

GI refers to the relative speed at which a certain food increases blood sugar after entering the human body compared to the same mass of glucose (glycemic index is 100).

Simply put, the higher the GI, the faster blood sugar rises after eating, and the more detrimental it is to blood sugar control.

The level of GI is related to the type of food, degree of rawness, processing method, etc.

Generally speaking, the higher the proportion of particulate matter in a food, the lower the GI.

Obviously, porridge takes a long time to heat, so the particles are smaller than rice and the GI is higher. The increase in blood sugar after drinking porridge will be more obvious than that after drinking rice.

Therefore, when diabetic patients are faced with the choice between rice and porridge, please choose rice.