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This post is an update on my experiments measuring the effect of low-carb foods and dietary supplements on blood sugar.

I’m still working my way through low-carb flour replacements, but since I’m running the vinegar experiment in parallel, it’s going to take a while to get through all of them.

In the meantime, I wanted to share my preliminary results and see if anyone has suggestions for additional low-carb flours to add to the study.

If you have any low-carb flour replacements you like or would like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM (contact form on the right).

Next week I’ll have an update on the vinegar experiments.

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Testing Queue:

• Prepared foods:
  • Tortillas: Reported
  • Cereal: Reported
  • Ice Cream: Reported
  • Bread: Reported
  • Meal replacements: in queue, (Ketochow reported)
  • Snack bars: in queue
  • Chocolate: Reported
• Ingredients:
  • Macronutrients & sugar substitutes: Reported
  • Flour replacements: Initial results, this post
  • Seeds & nuts: in queue
  • Vegetables: in queue
• Supplements:
  • Vinegar: Initial replication, more experiments in queue
  • MSG: Reported

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Flour Replacements

When making low-carb baked goods, I find that the most difficult ingredient to replace is flour. Flour provides bulk, absorbs water, and binds ingredients together, creating the structure of most baked goods. Unfortunately, it’s ~75% starch by weight with a glycemic index of 70, resulting in an extremely high impact on blood sugar.

Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of low-carb replacements for flour available, mostly almond flour, coconut flour, and resistant starches. Similar to other low-carb products, a ton of new flour replacements have hit the market in the last few years. As always, the net carb counts look good, but I wanted to test them to see if they really hold up (see evidence of blood glucose impact of dietary fibers here & here).

So far, I’ve found 11 flours to test:

• Baseline:
  • Wheat flour
• Modified starches
  • Carbalose flour
  • Carbquick
  • Freekeh flour
• Nuts:
  • Almond flour
  • Hazelnut flour
• Beans:
  • Lupin flour
  • Okara flour (from soybeans)
• Other seeds:
  • Coconut flour
  • Hemp protein powder
  • Flaxseed meal
  • Psyllium husk powder

I’ve gotten through 7 so far and all have been pretty good, with peak ∆BG of 16-29% of wheat flour by weight and 9-23% by volume (see chart below).

As mentioned above, since I’m running the vinegar experiment in parallel, it’s going to take a while to get through the remaining flours. Once I do, I’ll post a full update with more detail on taste, texture, and the full blood glucose analysis.

In the meantime, since I’ve gotten such great recommendations from the readers, I wanted to solicit suggestions for additional low-carb flours to add to this study.

If you have any low-carb flour replacements you like or would like to see tested, please post it in the comments or send me a PM (contact form on the right).

I’ll test all the requests over the next couple weeks and post the results.

– QD

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