Which low-carb bread tastes the very best? And which impacts blood sugar the least?

Steven Kaye decided to work out which worked for him by rigorously tasting and testing. Steven has LADA, a type of slow-progressing diabetes sometimes called “type 1.5,” since it shares some features of each type 1 and kind 2. It gives him an ideal opportunity to evaluate the true blood sugar impact of foods – the info shows up right on his CGM.

A disclaimer: your individual body may react in another way to those specific ingredients products.

Steven is an unusually dedicated self-experimenter. He writes about his work at QuantifiedDiabetes.com, and he agreed to share a few of his findings with Diabetes Every day:

I really like bread. Unfortunately, bread is loaded with carbohydrates, making it difficult for individuals with diabetes. And while there’s been an explosion of low-carb bread available on the market, in my experience, these products could be very hit and miss. Too many have disappointing flavor or texture, or send my blood sugar skyrocketing.

I desired to see if any low-carb breads could live as much as their hype, so I made a decision to check them myself. I scoured my local Safeway, Whole Foods, and Costco, buying all the differing kinds of low-carb bread I could find. I also asked for recommendations in several keto forums on Reddit, and ordered the highest options that were only available online.

Most of them weren’t superb: they either tasted almost nothing like regular bread, had an enormous blood sugar impact, or each. But just a few were great and have grow to be staples in my kitchen.

The Very Best Low-Carb Breads

• The very best white bread: Carbo0naut Low Carb White Bread
  • Very just like store-bought white bread. Light and fluffy, with a rather sour yeast flavor that I actually liked. A small amount of either psyllium husk or flax meal pieces mixed throughout gave a pleasant texture contrast.
  • When toasted, became crispy on the skin, while staying soft on the within.
  • Low blood glucose rise, only 27% of white bread per slice
• The very best wheat bread: Kiss my Keto Golden Wheat
  • Very just like store-bought wheat bread. Soft, but barely denser than white bread, with a light wheat taste.
  • When toasted, became crispy and nicely browned, with a much stronger (and higher) wheat taste.
  • Low blood glucose rise, only 20% of white bread per slice
• Lowest blood glucose impact, while still tasting like bread: UnBun UnBread
  • The UnBun products are made with almond flour, egg, and flaxseed. This provides them a rather spongy texture and a robust flax seed & egg taste. Very different from regular bread, but still pretty good.
  • When toasted, it firms up and becomes more similar in texture to wheat bread.
  • Lowest blood glucose rise of all of the breads I tested, only 9% of white bread per slice

The Details

I ended up with 14 low-carb breads.  The breads could be separated into 4 broad categories, based on style of ingredients they use as alternatives to high-carb flours: resistant starch, protein & low-carb flour, protein & fiber, and egg & nut. I also tried an everyday white bread for comparison.

I tested each, without taking any rapid insulin, while monitoring my blood sugar with my Dexcom G6 CGM. The blue line on each graph is my control, a slice of conventional white bread:

Should you want all the info on these products, my glucose response, and my tasting notes, they’re available on my website.

I learned just a few things about the several families of other bread.

Resistant Starch. The vast majority of the low-carb bread I tasted used some style of resistant starch as its major ingredient (wheat, tapioca, or potato). I’ve previously observed that resistant wheat starch has a big impact on my blood sugar, each alone and in tortillas. So, I suspected these resistant starch breads would have a high impact as well.

Surprisingly, two of the breads, Carb0naut White and LC Foods Cinnamon, had much lower blood glucose impact, a few quarter that of standard white bread. I used to be startled by how much lower this was than every other resistant starch-containing food I’ve tested. To make sure that this wasn’t an error, I repeated each measurements. In each cases I got the identical results, which confirmed that these two breads had unusually low impact on my blood glucose.

Aside from the LC Foods cinnamon, the taste and texture of the resistant starch breads were very just like white bread: light, fluffy, and with a really mild flavor. Happily, the Carb0naut White, which had the very best BG impact, also had the very best taste, with a light sour/yeast flavor that I actually liked and a few crunchy pieces for a pleasant textural contrast. The LC Foods cinnamon was really dense and difficult, with a robust stevia aftertaste that I actually disliked.

All of those breads, except the LC Foods, became crispy when toasted while remaining soft inside.

Protein & Flour and Protein & fiber. The second-largest category of bread used a mix of protein (gluten & various isolates) and a few combination of lower carb flours (soy, linseed, rye) or oat fiber as their major ingredients. Aside from the Kiss my Keto brand, these had very similar BG impact, barely higher than the resistant starch breads, but not great.

Taste, texture, and effect of toasting varied widely for these breads. Essentially the most interesting was the Kiss my Keto bread, which tasted extremely just like regular wheat bread. It also was probably the most improved by toasting, developing a much stronger wheat taste that I actually liked. Kiss my Keto has several other flavors, including a cinnamon raisin with a rather higher carb count. The cinnamon raisin is implausible; dense, chewy and barely sweet. Could be perfect for French toast. I’m definitely going to get it every now and then as a “treat.”

Egg & Nut. This category used a mix of egg and either nut butter or nut flour because the major ingredients. These had the bottom BG impact, but that comes on the expense of flavor and texture. All the breads I attempted on this category had a noticeable egg taste and a texture very different from regular bread.

The Base Culture was very dry, while the Julian Bakery breads were moist and didn’t taste like bread in any respect. The UnBun, however, was soft with a pleasant flax seed flavor — pretty different from regular bread, nevertheless it was okay. I also tried the UnBun buns, crusts, and tortillas, and I liked those significantly better (especially the buns). I won’t be getting the bread again but will probably include the buns as an occasional a part of dinners.

Takeaways

My favorite breads were Carbo0naut Low Carb White Bread and Kiss my Keto Golden Wheat, each of which had great flavor and comparatively minor blood sugar impacts.

It’s price noting that just about every bread within the experiment spiked my blood sugar greater than the web carb count may need predicted. Most of those products had huge amounts of fiber, in several ratios of insoluble to soluble. Many individuals with diabetes find that fiber affects their blood sugar lower than pure carbohydrates but greater than protein or fat.

I also learned that blood sugar impact will not be easy to predict from the first ingredients or nutrition labels. Breads with regular wheat flour can have the identical impact as those with indigestible fibers, and two breads with the identical total and/or net carb count can have wildly different impacts. The one way for me to know the impact of a food is to do a controlled test.

By the way in which, I’m at all times on the lookout for collaborators for future experiments. Should you’re fascinated by collaborating on scientifically rigorous self-experiments with low-carb foods, supplements, or other health interventions, please visit my website, QuantifiedDiabetes.com, or the Quantified Diabetes subreddit and get in contact!