Does Quinoa Raise Blood Sugar? (Part 2)

Well, this is my first time re-testing a food, and I was interested to see how the results compared to my initial quinoa blood sugar response. After all, it’s been about 5 years since that measurement.

After a carb-filled weekend, I had a low-carb Monday leading into my Tuesday morning test.

This time around, I had a different brand of quinoa with slightly altered nutritional values.

I was surprised that Healthworks listed sugar at roughly 6 grams per 300 calories, whereas the first test with Bob’s Red Mill was zero. The Healthworks quinoa also had double the fiber at 6 grams vs. 3 grams.

Overall, the fat, protein, and net carbs were similar enough to think the glucose spike should be similar to the previous test.

But that didn’t happen!

The first discrepancy was before eating any food with my baseline glucose reading. It was slightly high at 106 mg/dL compared to 80 mg/dL for the initial quinoa test.

There could be a few reasons for this.

The first could be my diet leading into the test.

The second could be that I did lots of yard work pulling weeds (~3 hrs) the previous day, and might have been slightly dehydrated in the morning.

Then my 1-hour response was 133 mg/dL which dipped below my baseline measurement after two hours to 105 mg/dL.

When looking at the first test, the 1-hour response was 45% higher than my baseline, while the 2-hour response was still elevated at 25% over the baseline.

This time around the 1-hour response was 25% higher than baseline, and the 2-hour response was roughly identical to the baseline reading.

Perhaps base reading was artificially high and that was coupled with a lower 2-hour response because of the previous day of exercise?

I think this first repeat test goes to show you that it’s not just food that affects your blood sugar!

Here are the results:

• Date: 6/15/2021
• Food: Organic Quinoa
• Fast: ~15 hours
• Base Blood Sugar: 106 mg/dL
• 1-Hour Response: 133 mg/dL
• 2 Hour Response: 105 mg/dL