Fiber One Cereal and Blood Sugar Control

What's the relationship between Kellogg's Fiber One cereal and blood sugar? Higher? Lower? Can Fiber One take the place of diabetic breakfast recipes?

Kellogg's advertises that a single serving of Fiber One can provide up to 57% of the average adult's daily requirements for dietary fiber. Sample boxes of the cereal are often handed out to newly diagnosed diabetics as a diabetic breakfast recipe recommendation.

And there's absolutely no doubt that if you usually eat doughnuts, eating Fiber One will give you lower blood sugars. If you have prediabetes or mild type II diabetes, eating Fiber One will help stop the swinging of your blood sugar pendulum.

A clinical trial at the Schwartz Center Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism in Cleveland, Ohio in the USA found that eating Fiber One results in lower insulin and higher leptin levels than eating corn flakes. Lower insulin means that any fat in your breakfast is more likely to be burned than stored. Higher leptin, in this case, means your appetite is more likely to stay under control at least until your midmorning snack.

Although Fiber One does result in lower post-prandial (after-meal) blood sugars for type II diabetics, this doesn't mean it doesn't have any carbohydrate at all. A Fiber One oat and chocolate bar, for instance, provides 9 grams of fiber but also 20 grams of carbohydrate--enough to cause a 100-300 mg/dl spike in blood sugars if you're insulin-dependent.

And the "fiber" in Fiber One isn't all natural whole grains. The main ingredient in many Fiber One products is chicory powder.

Chicory's carbohydrate is slowly released. In the gut, it even helps the body absorb more calcium from food. But like all other "natural" and "low-glycemic index" carbohydrates, eventually it's turned into glucose that finds its way into your bloodstream. The advantage is, if you're a type II diabetic, your body can keep up with the blood sugars that are released.

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