SC - One diabetic's view of adding sugar to counteract acidity

[Mordonna22 at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/27/2000 6:15:57 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
owner-sca-cooks at ansteorra.org writes:

<<  or maybe the supposedly "benign"
 substance was a touch of sugar to counter a little acidity... do you have
 any diabetics in the hall?   you're getting into a sticky wicket here. >>

As a diabetic who has lived with the disease for over thirty years, I can 
tell you that adding a bit of sugar to counter acidity is expected and 
allowed for by any responsible diabetic.  Sugar is an insidious and 
ubiquitous substance.  Indeed, despite what most people believe, diabetics 
REQUIRE sugar in their diet.  We simply have to balance our intake of sugar 
against our source of insulin.  It is a juggling act, true, but it is not 
THAT easy to unbalance the vast majority of us.  Perhaps it would be more 
accurate to say that the balancing act is so complex that it is impossible to 
get it perfectly correct even under ideal, controlled situations.  A diabetic 
who is so "brittle" that a miniscule amount of sugar added to a dish will 
adversely affect them has no business eating food prepared by anyone other 
than themselves.
Food is so complex that balancing sugar intake precisely is impossible to do. 
 There are far too many variables.  For instance, let us say that a dish 
contains carrots.   Now on most "exchange" lists, raw carrots are allowed 
"free", that is one can eat as many as one likes of them.  However, cooked 
carrots are a totally different proposition.  The starches in carrots are 
difficult to digest when raw, but cooking them converts them to easily 
digestible sugars.  The more you cook them, the easier they are to digest.  
So a dish that has very lightly cooked carrots may be low in available sugars 
when originally cooked, but be higher in available sugars when warmed over, 
without adding anything.  Another variable with carrots is how mature they 
are.  Fresh "baby" carrots, have more sugar than mature carrots out of the 
root cellar.  All natural foods have this kind of complexity in available 
sugars.  Adding a bit of sugar to counteract acidity would be no more harmful 
to a diabetic than overcooking the carrots or using fresh, young carrots 
instead of more mature, stored carrots in the same dish. 

Mordonna The Cook